


Blank Disc

by TheFallenArchangel



Series: Watching the Show [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Characters Watching Supernatural, Characters Watching the Show, Cross-Post, Gen, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1765036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFallenArchangel/pseuds/TheFallenArchangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve year old Sam, sixteen year old Dean, John, and Bobby find an unmarked disc in their hotel room while on a hunt. What they find on it reveals their past, their future, and the truth of who they are. In short, I made a Characters Watch The Show fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note, in case you didn't realize; In the show: bold, not in the show: not bold.

"Hey Dad?" Twelve year old Sam Winchester called, sitting at the edge of a twin bed that'd been slept in by God only knew how many people. "Did you and Dean rent a movie?" he held the unmarked disc carefully, slipping it out of the paper sleeve he'd found it in, looking for a title.

"No." Came the short, almost snapped, reply from the other side of the motel room. "Why?"

"Because I found this." the boy explained, holding up the DVD for his father to see - if John had even been really paying attention. The hunter was fixated on finding a bit of information in one of Bobby's old books, and therefore had no interest in being distracted by something so trivial.

"Whoever was here before us probably just left it behind. I'd leave it be Sam." Bobby commented over the top of his own leatherbound book, tone considerably softer than John's. Of course Sam obeyed, slipping the disc back into the envelope in had come in.

"Yeah Sammy, might have porn or something on it." Dean said with a smirk, coming out of the bathroom. He took the disc out of his little brother's hand with a little grin. Dean was sixteen, and had just hit another growth spurt, and was overall just big - a fact he'd learned to enjoy lording over his shorter, smaller sibling.

"If it might have porn on it, why are you putting it on?" Sam challenged, annoyed at the way the disc had been snatched away from him. He pointedly looked away from the television - just in case it was porn - as his brother put the movie in the player.

"Dean..." their father sighed, still not looking up from the book. The boys had always been prone to bickering, but it seemed to have gotten worse recently, and that in itself was exhausting. He said nothing further though, which Dean took to be permission to watch it anyway, flouncing onto the bed and sitting crosslegged next to Sam.

" **SUPERNATURAL" the screen declared in flashing blue letters, before fading into darkness for a few seconds. "Lawrence, Kansas - 22 Years Ago" appeared on the screen as darkness faded, the sounds of crickets becoming audible as the black screen faded to the image of a large tree, barren of leaves, outside a one of several suburban homes at night.**

Dean made a choked little noise and tilted his head to the side some. "Dad? Isn't that our old house?" Needless to say, that got John's attention, as well as Bobby's, and the two men promptly put their books down and paid rapt attention.

" **Come on, let's say goodnight to your brother." A woman's voice said gently, as the scene shifted to show a woman carrying a young child in a darkened room. The lights turned on to reveal Mary Winchester and a young Dean in what was clearly a nursery.**

"Mary.." John breathed, voice somewhere between pained and awed.

"Mom.." Dean stared at the screen with wide eyes, seeing his mother for the first time since he was young.

"Dean.. is that..?" Sam questioned, curiosity and confusion in his eyes. He recognized his mother, mainly from the pictures - but the sound of her voice lingered with him as familiar. He didn't really need an answer from his brother.

**An infant Sam laid in a crib, looking over at his mother and brother. Mary set Dean down, who ran across the room and leaned over the side of the crib and kissed his little brother on the forehead.**

"' **Night Sam."**

"Is that me?" Sam asked, once again looking to his brother, who nodded mutely, eyes glued on the screen with an odd sort of reverence. He felt a twinge of sadness for a moment, as he realized that he never really knew his mother, and never would, the way his father and Dean did.

" **Goodnight love." Mary whispered, arm around Dean and hand brushing through baby Sam's hair and pressing a tender kiss where his brother had not seconds before.**

" **Hey Dean." John Winchester smiled from the doorway, watching his family.**

" **Daddy!" Dean yelled happily, running to his father, who picked him up easily.**

" **Hey buddy! So what do you think? You think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?" Young Dean shook his head, laughing happily.**

" **No daddy."**

**John laughed, before agreeing, "No."**

Bobby looked at the Winchesters with a sympathetic kind of sadness. It was difficult, seeing how they were before Mary died, before they became hunters. It was even worse, seeing how devastated John and Dean looked, when Sam could at best look merely confused. It wasn't the boy's fault, he knew, Sam had been so young when Mary died, that he couldn't be expected to remember much, if anything.

"No.." John breathed as he remembered, in vivid detail, what he was seeing on the screen. This was the night his wife died. This was the night that his family's whole world came crumbling down. It was hard to stomach, and he had to fight down a wave of nausea.

" **You got him?" Mary, asked, pausing in the doorway behind her husband and oldest son, hand on John's arm.**

" **I got him." John confirmed, smiling into the nursery and hugging Dean close. "Sweet dreams Sam." He said gently, before carrying Dean out of the room and flicking off the lights. Baby Sam laid in his crib, cooing softly and looking up at his mobile, which slowly began to spin on it's own above him. On the wall, the clock stopped and the lights flickered.**

Every hunter in the room, including Sam and Dean, tensed. Things moving on their own were never, ever, under any circumstances good. Clocks stopping and lights flickering were even worse.

"Dad?" Dean asked, peeling his eyes away from the screen to look at his father. "Do you know what this is?" He didn't get an answer, or even an acknowledgement,only stony silence. He looked back to the television as the scene changed.

**Lights flickered on a baby monitor sitting on a nightstand. Next to it, a photo of Mary and John, and behind that, Mary herself, who was roused as Sam began to cry. She turned the light and rolled over, "John?" She turned, and upon realizing that her husband wasn't in bed, got up.**

"No.. mom.." Dean said softly, pleading with the television, as if he could change the past by warning his mother now. "Don't get up.. Don't."

"Tonight's the night she.." Sam whispered, looking at the covers on the bed like they were the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. "Isn't it?" He didn't get an answer. He didn't need one. He already knew.

**Mary walked down the hallway, rubbing her eyes. The lights were back on in the nursery when she entered, a figure leaning over the crib.**

" **John?" She asked, "Is he hungry?" The figure turned toward her slightly, still obscured in shadow, and made a soft shushing sound.**

"No.. that's not me.." John said, looking desperately at the screen. "It's not me Mary." He repeated it as if he were there, as if he were absolutely desperate for her to believe him. "Don't.."

" **Alright." Mary sighed, resignation in her tone. She headed back into the hallway, intent on going back to bed, when the flickering of a lightbulb caught her eye. She walked toward it, tapping the glass gently until the beam steadied. She seemed satisfied, until she caught sight of another flickering light downstairs. She went to investigate, only to find John sleeping soundly on the couch, a war movie on TV. She realized instantly that if that was John, then he couldn't be upstairs and ran back.**

**"Sammy! Sammy!" She called, stopping short upon entering the nursery again.**

"Dammit." John cursed, standing out of his chair roughly. His body was stone stiff and his eyes were dark as he glared at the screen. "If I had been awake.." He started, but Bobby cut him off quickly.

"You'd have what? You weren't a hunter then, John." He pointed out logically. "Even if you'd have been awake, there wouldn't have been a damn thing you coulda done. You couldn'ta stopped it if you tried." His voice left little room for argument, and John settled back into his chair a second later.

**Back in the living room, John jolted awake after hearing Mary scream. He scrambled out of his chair and lunged up the stairs, calling out for his wife. When he got upstairs, he burst into the then-closed nursery. All was quiet and still, except for Sam awake in his crib. John glanced around before pushing down the side of Sam's crib.**

" **Hey Sammy, you okay?" He asked gently. Something dark appeared next to Sam, a dime of dark color. John touched it with a finger, and two more spots appeared on his hand. They're drops of liquid, falling from above, John realizes and looks up.**

**Mary was sprawled, impossibly, across the ceiling, as if laying on the ground. The stomach of her nightgown was scarlet with blood, she struggled to breathe as she stared at John, who dropped to the floor.**

John's knuckles were white as he gripped the sides of his chair, fighting the growing urge to vomit as he stared at what had been his nightmare for months, years.

Dean looked like he was about to cry, but at the same time couldn't bear to look away from the screen. He reached over and grabbed ahold of Sam's arm, who was staring in horror and fear.

Bobby watched silently, face impassive under a mask. He was strongly reminded of his own wife, and images of her death flashed in his mind for a moment as Mary Winchester died before his eyes.

**Mary exploded into flames, which began to spread across the ceiling. In his crib, Sam started to cry, reminding John forcefully that he was not alone. He stood and scooped up his son, holding him tight against his body and rushing out of the room.**

**Meanwhile, Dean had woken and come to investigate. He yelled to his father, who pressed Sam into his arms.**

" **Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back!" John ordered, giving Dean a little push. "Now Dean, go!" Obediently, Dean turned and ran while John turned back to the inferno, calling out again for his wife.**

"I didn't know you carried me out of the house." Sam said softly, turning to his brother, who didn't even respond. "Thanks for not dropping me down the stairs." he tried, a weak attempt to lighten the mood. Dean gave a half-laugh, and wrapped his arm loosely around Sam's shoulders.

"No problem Sammy." He replied, pausing for a beat and looking away from the movie. "Not that brain damage would've affected you at all." he teased back half heartedly. Sam pushed him away, laughing - though it's too loud, too bright to be genuine.

**Still running, Dean paused. "Its okay Sammy." he assured his brother looking up at the window that glowed gold.**

At that moment, John burst out of the house, grabbing both of his sons and carrying them away, mumbling "I gotcha." Over the top of Dean's head as fire exploded out of the house.

**Firefighters sprayed water on the house, yelling occasionally back and forth to each other while police officers held the interested neighbors at bay. Across the street from the house, John and Dean sat on the hood of the John's Impala, Sam tucked against his father's chest. John stared upward, a dark look flashing across his face**

Dean pushed the heel of his hand against his cheek, forcing away the single tear that'd fallen. He pulled his by then crying little brother against his side, rubbing circles against his back to soothe him.

John looked close to breaking down and crying himself, hands clasped together and shaking slightly. Head bowed as he looked at the floor. Bobby stood and placed a hand on John's neck, a comforting gesture that John stiffened under.

They all jumped when bright, happy music burst from the television.


	2. Pilot - Part 1

"What's this?" Bobby asked, as if anyone could even attempt to answer. He reached a hand up to rub at his chin, fingers brushing over his beard thoughtfully.

**"Stanford University - Present Day" Appeared in white lettering.**

"Well the thing said that mom.." Sam paused, unsure of how to describe what they'd just, impossibly seen. He coughed, "They said it happened 22 years ago, but it only happened twelve years ago." he reasoned, looking between Dean and his father. "So I guess this is ten years in the future?" The way he said it was more like a question than an actual explanation, but any objection to his theory was forgotten a second later.

**"Sam!" A woman called walking around a corner. She was young, blonde, very pretty, and adjusting the hat that went along with the sexy nurse costume she was wearing.**

Dean wolf-whistled.

**"Get a move on, would ya? We were supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago." Behind her, and soon the camera's focus, was the same picture of John and Mary from the house. "Sam? You coming or what?" she asked, walking out of sight. Sam poked his head around the corner. He wasn't wearing any costume, just jeans and three shirts.**

**"Do I have to?"**

"Whoa Sammy!" Dean yelped, surprise etched across his face. "You look different!" He looked between his younger brother and the version on the TV several times, as if comparing the two. "Like seriously! What the hell happened?" There's laughter in his voice, mingled with confusion and curiosity.

"How am I supposed to know? It hasn't happened yet." Sam replied, then grimaced. Since when did he automatically assume that this actually was the future? His logical mind answered that question with a prompt 'when it showed in perfect accuracy how your mother died.'

**"Yes!" Jess answered, laughing. "It'll be fun."**

**Sam straightened up and walked fully into the room - whereupon his full height could be seen against the doorframe.**

"The boy's huge!" Bobby exclaimed, estimating Sam's height based on the comparison to the doorframe as well over six foot. He looked to the younger Sam a few feet away, scrawny and barely passing four foot six.

Dean huffed quietly. He was willing to bet that if Sam was that tall in the future, that he was even taller, being the older brother and all. He couldn't even imagine little Sammy being taller than him, in any form of the future.

**He walked toward Jess, smiling a bit.**

**"And where is your costume?" Jess questioned, grinning, to which Sam laughed and ducked his head, small smile working it's way across his lips as he did so.**

**"You know how I feel about Halloween." He said simply, as if that explained everything.**

"Wait, does she know you're a hunter?" Dean asked, looking to his little brother expectantly, "because we're not supposed to tell anybody. You know that."

"How am I supposed to know what she knows Dean?" Sam asked, exasperation in his voice. He wondered if this was going to happen a lot as they watched this - people asking questions that nobody could answer as if they expected one.

**A man staggered down a street at night, dressed in zombie clothing. As he reached a corner, he whirled to the left and threw his arms out, clearly an attempt to startle Jess and Sam, who merely laughed. Sam shook his head and grinned, while Jess, still in the nurse's outfit grinned.**

**"Whaddya think, huh?" Luis, the man, asked, motioning to his costume with a proud little smirk.**

**"Whatever." Sam replied, rolling his eyes and continuing down the sidewalk. Jess fell into step next to him, slipping her hand into his.**

**"At least I wore a costume!" He defended himself, "Man, if your sorry ass was trick or treating at my house, there would be no popcorn balls for you!" Sam laughed at that, looking at his friend over his shoulder.**

**"You gave out popcorn balls?" he asked.**

"Popcorn balls?" Dean repeated the question, tilting his head. "I mean.. I'm not exactly an expert, but aren't you supposed to give out candy on Halloween?" Sam just shrugged, not looking away from the TV. "Man, even if the future you've got weird friends Sammy." He paused for a moment, "Even if I do gotta admit.. your girlfriend's hot."

**"You could've at least gone as a slutty version of something!" Luis argued, running so as not to get left behind by the couple. "Slutty Dorothy, Slutty Alice, slutty nurse-" he cut off at a questioning look from Jess. "I-I didn't mean you." he amended himself.**

**"Man, what can I say?" Sam questioned, "I've never been a big fan of the whole thing.**

**"Never been a fan-" Luis repeats, disbelieving, "What, what you Communist? Who doesn't like Halloween?"**

"People who know that the monsters are real." Bobby answered Luis' question simply, drawing eyes from the Winchesters. He simply shrugged. "It's true, an' Sam knows it too." He adds, nodding back to the show, using the adult Sam's expression as added evidence to prove his statement to be true.

**Sam looked away from the other two, a dark expression clouding his features for a split second.**

**Suddenly loud music blared as a bar - decorated for Halloween with a gargoyle, cobwebs, and full to capacity of people in costumes - was displayed.**

**Jess raised a glass to Luis as he met her and Sam at a small table. "So here's to Sam and his awesome LSAT victory!"**

**"Alright, alright, it's not that big a deal." Sam argued, not looking quite comfortable as the center of attention. Nevertheless, he clinked his shot glass against the other two.**

**"Yeah, he acts all humble." Jess teased, "but he scored a one-seventy-four."**

Dean's jaw dropped. Sam looked at him with wide, confused eyes. "Is that good?" he asked, curious and the slightest bit excited as he looked back to his dad.

"That's freakishly good Sammy." Dean answered, slapping his brother hard between the shoulderblades. Sam made a little noise of objection to the blow, but couldn't hide the smile at the thought of being in college and having 'freakishly good' scores on what had to be a pretty important test.

**"Is that good?" Luis asked after downing his shot.**

**"Scary good." Jess confirmed, beaming at Sam before doing her own.**

**"Well there ya go! You're a first round draft pick. You can go to any law school you want!" Luis encouraged, taking a seat next to Sam and grinning.**

"Law school Sam, really?" Dean questioned, arching an eyebrow at his brother before rolling his eyes. "You're such a nerd."

"I am not a nerd!" Sam snapped, hitting Dean's arm as hard as he could. He felt a rush of satisfaction as his brother winced. He knew that there would be a bruise there in a few hours.

"Boys behave.." John ordered, though he was clearly distracted, almost entranced by the sight of his youngest son, grown and living what seemed to be a perfectly respectable life. There was also a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach regarding that perfectly respectable life. He'd been a hunter for twelve years, and he had already figured out that you don't just get to quit.

**"Actually, I have an interview here, Monday. If it goes okay I think I've got a shot at a full ride next year." Sam explained, though there was doubt in his voice.**

**"Hey, it's gonna go great." Jess interjected.**

**"It better." Sam replied, smiling at the way she beamed at him. The moment was broken by Luis, who hit at Sam's shoulder.**

**"So how does it feel to be the golden boy of your family?"**

"Golden boy?" Dean questioned, voice almost incredulous. "No offense Sammy, but high test scores don't exactly make you a golden boy."

**"Ah. They don't know." Sam looked down as he said it.**

"Why don't we know?" Sam expected it to be Dean to ask that question - certainly not his father. But sure enough, he looked behind him to see John with an almost wounded look on his face, like he was sincerely upset to be, even in some distant future, missing out on something that happened in Sam's life. The twelve year old brushed it off though, because his dad didn't care about anything except hunting, so why the heck would he care about test scores ten years in the future.

**"Oh no! I would be gloating!" Luis complained, like he was annoyed that Sam was missing such an opportunity. "Why not?"**

**"Because we're not exactly the Bradys." Sam answered, somewhat evasively, throwing a toothpick at his friend.**

**"And I'm not exactly the Huxtables!" Luis replied without missing a beat. "More shots?" Though Sam and Jess both denied the offer, Luis bounded back off the bar anyway, looking positively pleased with himself.**

**"No seriously, I'm proud of you." Jess told Sam once Luis was gone. "And you're gonna knock 'em dead on Monday and get that full ride." By the tone of her voice, she truly believed it, she had faith in Sam. "I know it."**

**"What would I do without you?" He asked.**

**"Crash and burn." was her easy reply as she pulled him into a kiss.**

"Seriously? Could this get any more romcom?" Dean asked, deliberately looking away from the screen. He also refused to look at Sam, who had an almost smug look of amusement on his face.

"Jealous Dean?" he teased throwing an abandoned sock at his brother, laughing.

"What reason do I have to be jealous?" Dean retorted, frowning. "We don't know what kind of life I have yet." Truthfully, he'd be surprised if he had any sort of life. He could never see himself leaving hunting - it'd become a part of who he was at a very core level, something he couldn't, and didn't want to defy.

**Back at the apartment, Sam and Jess slept, back to back. A few seconds later, there was a low creaking noise as what sounded like a window opened. Sam's eyes snapped open, alert and completely aware the second a thud accompanied the first noise. He slid out of bed slowly, moving to investigate.**

The entire room tensed. They understood and recognized the way the adult Sam walked, the way he held his body and the way he carried himself. Though the twelve year old Sam with them now had never been on an actual, legitimate hunt, seeing him move like that gave them a certainty that he'd been raised in it, that he was used to hunting, fighting, moving through the dark silently. There was no leftover doubt that Sam was, or at least used to be, a hunter.

Bobby frowned, the revelation slightly discomforting. He knew that Sam didn't want to be a hunter, just wanted to be normal. The older hunter had always figured that if anyone would be able to do the impossible and get away from hunting and have a normal life, it'd be Sam - but here was a good bit of proof that clearly said that he hadn't, that at some level now, Sam would always be a hunter, because you didn't just get away from the life once you were trained in it.

**Sam spotted an open window that, judging by the look on his face, had most definitely been closed earlier. The sound of footsteps echoed through the house, and Sam watched, jaw set, as a silhouette of a man moved past strings of beads that covered a doorway. Without a second's hesitation, Sam moved off to a different part of the apartment, keeping himself between the intruder and the bedroom where Jess still slept. He pressed himself against the wall beside a doorway, waiting. When the intruder pushed open the glass door and entered the room, Sam was upon him, grabbing his shoulder. The intruder aimed a blow at Sam, who evaded it with relative ease, and the two struggled for a moment before Sam was shoved away. Recovering quickly Sam kicked, though he was blocked and pushed into the next room, pushing him into the light.**

**If the intruder hadn't seen Sam's face before, he saw it now. Sam also got a glimpse for the first time of the man, who promptly elbowed him in the face. The kick he throws at the man's head was narrowly avoided, and a second later, he was blocking a return blow. A second later, and the man pinned Sam to the floor - one hand on the Winchester's neck and the other on his wrist. He grinned.**

**"Whoa.. easy tiger."**

**"Dean?!"**

Dean snorted, smirking at his little brother. "See? Even in the future I'm better than you." He said, grinning like a madman at the image of the older him pinning down Sam.

"Well regardless of who won, that was some damn good fightin'." Bobby commented. He'd been impressed with the way the two had fought. There'd been no confusion, no blind hits into the dark, and not a single blow had missed it's mark, though it must've been impossible to see. It was obvious that the boys had trained for years, been taught and had most likely learned the hard way a few times. That was the only way one could aquire skill like that, in his experience.

"He's right." John agreed, nodding once in Bobby's direction. "Nice job boys." It was admittedly odd, he decided, complimenting his sons on things they hadn't done yet, but the fight had been impressive. He'd felt a slight flash of pride when he noticed small parts of their fighting style that seemed to mimic his own, not that he'd ever, under any circumstances, admit to it. He just didn't say things like that.

**Dean laughed.**

**"You scared the crap out of me!" Sam snapped.**

**"That's 'cause you're out of practice." the older Winchester retorted, smirking and panting.**

**Sam grabbed Dean's wrist and hooked his leg around his brother and driving his heel into his back and pinning his brother down, as if to prove a point. He pressed his knee into Dean's chest, holding him down.**

**"Or not." In approval, Sam tapped his own leg twice. "Let me up." The older Winchester grumbled.**

Sam laughed, looking at his older brother with a smug little smile. "You were saying?" He asked, pleased with himself. There was a small bit of pride there at knowing that, at least in some point of his life, he'd be strong enough to pin Dean beneath him, and it wasn't the other way around. Dean had always been bigger and stronger than him, and had always been the better fighter. Even now, when they sparred, he took no mercy on his younger sibling, and Sam had the bruises to prove it.

**Sam rolled to his feet, pulling Dean up with him.**

At once, Dean looked outraged.

"What!? How the hell did Sammy get taller than me?" He demanded, looking quite affronted. He always assumed that he'd be bigger than Sam. It was his job as the older brother, wasn't it? To be all strong and intimidating? But no, future Sammy actually had several inches on him. In all fairness, it looked like he had more muscle, but he couldn't over the fact that Sammy was taller than him. That was so backwards.

Sam, meanwhile, looked positively delighted.

**"Dean, what the hell are you doing here?" Sam asked, voice suddenly less surprised and more.. angry? Frustrated? Either way, he seemed less than thrilled to see his brother.**

**"Well, I was looking for a beer." Dean replied, reaching out and grabbing ahold of Sammy's shoulders. He shook them a little bit as he caught his breath before letting his hands drop.**

**"What the hell are you doing here?" Sam asked again, tone lower this time, more demanding and less questioning. All suprise and happiness at seeing his brother again is gone, replaced by annoyance and indignation.**

**"Okay. Alright. We gotta talk."**

"What, not happy to see me Sammy?" Dean asked, looking actually kind of offended at his future self's reception. He hadn't expected a hug or anything, but he certainly figured that he wouldn't get the complete cold shoulder as he seemed to have gotten.

**"Uh, the phone?" Sam suggested sharply.**

**"If I'da called, would you have picked up?" Dean challenged, playful voice gone.**

"What coulda happened to you two to make ya like that?" Bobby wondered aloud. Sam and Dean were close, even when they were fighting, he'd seen that over the past decade. It was hard for him to imagine anything driving them so far apart that they'd address each other so coldly and with so little regard - though apparently something had.

A small pang of sadness shot through John as he saw the way his boys, who he always believed to love each other unconditionally, behaving so coldly to each other. He always trusted one to look out for the other, even with them at such a young age, so watching them like this was difficult.

**"Sam?" Jess' voice rang out from the side as she turned the light on. Her sleepwear consisted of short shorts and a cropped Smurfs shirt, and both brother's turned to her in unison.**

Dean wolf-whistled again. Sam hit him in the shoulder again.

**Dean's eyes widened for a moment in shock, before Sam sighed.**

**"Jess. Hey. Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica." he introduced briefly.**

**"Wait, your brother Dean?" she asked, smiling. Sam nodded, looking none too thrilled with this development.**

**"I love the Smurfs." Dean said with a suggestive look, stepping closer. "You know, I gotta tell you, You are completely out of my brother's league." He commented, chuckling lightly.**

"Oh my god Dean." Sam groaned, looking down. "You're horrible." he muttered. Truthfully, he expected no different from his brother, even if was ten or so years in the future. He could always count on his brother to make the atmosphere feel weird by awkwardly flirting with a girl.

**Jess smiled at Dean, like she honestly expected no different from him. Her eyes moved to Sam, and she turned to leave. "Just let me put something on." She only took a step or two before Dean's voice stopped her.**

**"No, no, no. I wouldn't dream of it." He said, casting an obvious look at her cleavage. "Seriously." He retreated back to stand near his brother again, though his eyes didn't leave Jess as Sam looked at him with a stony expression. "Anyway, I gotta talk to your boyfriend here about some private family business. But uh, nice meeting you."**

**"No." Sam said simply, moving to Jess' side and slipping his arm around her. "No, whatever you say you can say in front of her."**

"So she  _does_  know about hunting then." Dean confirmed, nodding.

**"Okay.." Dean turned to face them straight on. "Uhm.. Dad hasn't been home in a few days." To that, Sam snorted, looking mildly amused.**

**"So he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later." His voice is dismissive, uncaring. Dean though, ducked his head for a second before looking back up at his brother.**

**"Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days." Sam's expression doesn't change at all, though his eyes themselves seem to darken some.**

**"Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside."**

"Okay.. maybe not." Dean amended his earlier statement, looking at Sam, who was looking back at their dad, as if reassuring that he was still there now, and hadn't mysteriously vanished.

**Sam followed Dean down an empty stairwell, having changed into jeans and a hoodie. "I mean, come on. You can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you." He argued.**

**"You're not hearing me, Sammy. Dad's missing. I need you to help me find him." Dean replied, like it was the simplest thing in the world, like it needed no thought or consideration, like it was a no-brainer to just vanish into the night with his brother and abandon the life he'd made for himself here.**

**"You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He's always missing, and he's always fine." Sam pointed out, leaning over the edge of the last step to tower over his brother, anger, not concern in his features.**

"Devils Gates in Clifton?" John mused quietly. The Amherst poltergeist had been about a year ago now, but they'd yet to go to Clifton. He purposely chose to focus on that bit of information, because it was easier to wonder about that then to wonder about where his future self had vanished to, and why Sam seemed to not care at all. "Guess we'll find out eventually." He forced his voice to be even, though he knew full well that his actual concerns were obvious.

**"Not for this long. Now are you gonna come with me or not?" He asked, an ultimatum in his voice.**

**"I'm not." Sam answered, without so much as a second's hesitation.**

**"Why not?" Dean demanded, arching an eyebrow quizzically, as if he had no idea why Sam wouldn't come with him.**

**"I swore I was done hunting. For good."**

Bobby frowned, looking at Sam with conflicting emotions. One on hand, he wanted to cheer the boy on for finally rebelling against his old man and making a life for himself, but on the other, he wanted to slap him in the back of the head for refusing to try and find John, who seemed to be in some serious trouble. He did realize, though, that by judging by the look on the future Sam's face, that something serious had happened to force that rebellion and cause a break.

"Really Sammy?" Dean asked, looking down at his little brother next to him. "You gave it up?" There were more questions that what he actually asked, such as 'why would you give up the only life you've ever known?' and 'do you really hate this life so much you'd let dad die just to get away from it?' but he didn't dare ask more - he wasn't entirely sure he was prepared for the answer.

Sam just shrugged, looking down.

**"Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad." Dean argued, turning and continuing down the stairs again. Sam followed quickly, easily keeping up with his older brother and occasionally taking two steps at a time, just because it was more convenient.**

**"Yeah? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45." Sam argued, which made Dean stop short as they reached the exit door.**

**"Well, what was he supposed to do?" he asked, like he couldn't even fathom another possible solution to a child being afraid of an imaginary monster - which, admittedly, was part of the problem.**

**"I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, 'don't be afraid of the dark'!"**

Sam looked very much like he wanted to disappear. He practically felt the three pairs of eyes that burned into him, and he couldn't make himself face them. He didn't need to, really, he already knew what would be in each gaze. Bobby would look sorry, almost like he felt guilty, but would never say anything. Dad would look emotionless, but there would be an underlying current of betrayal in his gaze that would make Sam feel like crap to his very core - like having his own opinion on things was a horrible, unforgivable sin. And Dean.. Dean would look annoyed, like how could Sam be so stupid as to want normal. Normal was boring - safety and longer lifespan be damned.

**"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there!"**

**"Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her." Dean looked away from his brother, who continued, "But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find."**

**"We save a lot of people doing it, too." Dean countered. There was a long pause after that as both seemed to realize that they'd stopped using past tense. They were lapsing back into their old ways, even if the arguing was less false now.**

"Damn straight." Dean agreed, nodding once. It was all he could think to say, and he couldn't let the tension in the room grow any more without some kind of attempt at redirection or distraction.

**"You think mom would've wanted this for us?"**

John stiffened as the tension climbed. It was the question that nobody wanted to ask because, and he knew it to be true, they all knew Mary would never have wanted this for her children. They all knew it. Just nobody ever actually said it.

**Dean rolled his eyes and pushed open the door, starting up the last small flight of stairs into the parking lot as Sam talked behind him.**

**"The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors." They paused at the Impala, where Dean rounded on Sam.**

**"So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?" There was so much derision in his voice as he said it, it rendered the younger Winchester silent for a solid five seconds.**

**"No. Not normal. Safe."**

**"Is that why you ran away?" Dean snapped. He seemed to realize his mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth though, because not more than a second after he asked, he looked away as Sam shook his head and raised his eyebrows in disbelief.**

**"I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone."**

Sam winced. His dad had told him to stay gone? The thought of him abandoning his family had stung as it was. Then to learn that he hadn't even left - he'd been told to leave.. It nearly reduced him to tears as his shoulders slumped inward.

Bobby and Dean fixed John with matching shocked and incredulous looks. Both were astounded that, apparently, John would go as far as to banish his son for not going along with the path he wanted him to have. Truthfully though, neither were overly surprised. Twelve years old and Sammy butted heads with his father already, an increasingly aggressive and dominant personality beginning already within him.

**"And that's what I'm doing."**

**"Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it." Dean argued, looking back at his little brother, who didn't say anything for a long moment. "I can't do this alone." Dean added when he didn't get a response.**

**"Yes you can."**

**"Yeah, well I don't want to." To that, Sam sighed, looking down.**

**"What was he hunting?"**

"Atta boy Sammy." Dean teased, trying, like his brother had before, to lighten the mood a little bit. This, so far, was intense as hell, on both ends of the spectrum.

Again, Bobby found himself distressed by what he saw in Sam, both present and future. All Sam wanted was out - and nobody was ever going to let him have it. He felt a rush of sympathy for the kid, as well as another one for the future Dean, who only wanted to save his father, who could easily be in trouble.

**Dean began digging through the arsenal in the Impala's trunk, searching through the clutter. "Alright.. where the hell did I put that thing.." he muttered to himself.**

**"So when dad left, why didn't you go with him?" Sam asked as Dean searched for the information in the trunk.**

**"I was working my own gig. This voodoo thing in New Orleans." he explained.**

"Awesome." Dean muttered. He always wanted to go on hunts by himself, but his father never let him - and he'd begun to wonder if he ever would.

**"Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?" Sam asked clearly surprised.**

**"I'm twenty-six dude."**

Sam smirked, proud of the fact that his initial theory of the disk being ten years in the future was correct.

**Dean pulled an envelope out of the trunk, taking some papers out of it. "All right, here we go. So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy," he handed Sam a Missing Person's flyer. "They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA."**

**"So maybe he was kidnapped." Sam offered, attempting to find a non-supernatural explanation for the missing man.**

**"Yeah. Well, here's another one in April. Another one in December 'oh-four, 'oh-three, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two, ten of them over the past twenty years." He accented each year with the tossing down of a newspaper that listed another missing person from the area. All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road." Sam put all the papers back in the folder while Dean pulled a bag out of the trunk.**

**"It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him since, which is bad enough." He grabbed a handheld tape recorder. "Then I get this voicemail yesterday." He pressed play as the recording began.**

**_"Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger."_ ** **John's voice was disrupted by nearly constant static before Dean hit stop.**

"When are we not in danger?" Dean asked sarcastically as he listened to the recording. He tilted his head at the tone in his father's voice. He was unfamiliar with the tone he used, which was kinda freaky. Then he focused in on the static that accompanied it. He opened his mouth to point out that there was clearly EVP on the tape, but Sam beat him to it. The older Sam, that is.

**"You know there's EVP on that?" Sam asked as he listened. Dean grinned.**

**"Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?" Sam shook his head. "All right. I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got." He pressed play again, and rather than their father's voice, they heard a woman's.**

_**"I can never go home..."** _

**Dean pressed stop again, as Sam repeated the EVP in a quiet, questioning voice. Dean put the recorder back in the trunk and closed it, before turning to his brother.**

**"You know, in almost four years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing."**

"Four years?" Dean choked, incredulous. He couldn't imagine four months without Sammy around, nevermind four years. He wasn't able to fathom it, and truthfully, he didn't much want to. He loved his baby brother, no matter what he'd ever said or how much he teased him.

**Sam looked away, sighed, and looked back, resigned. "All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him."**

**Dean nodded, clearly trying hard not to smile. "But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here." Sam turned to go back to the apartment, but he stopped and looked back when Dean spoke to him again.**

**"What's first thing Monday?"**

**"I have this...I have an interview."**

**"What, a job interview? Skip it." Dean suggested with a shrug and a devil-may-care smile, but Sam shook his head.**

**"It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate." Sam corrected.**

**"Law school?" Dean asked, smirking.**

Dean frowned, feeling like a crappy brother for things he hadn't even done yet. He'd let Sam walk out and hadn't spoken to him in four years, and didn't even know what Sammy was going to college for. He knew that it was all their faults for the lack of communication, but he couldn't help but to want to take responsibility for it.

**"So we got a deal or not?" Sam asked.**

**Dean didn't respond.**

**Back in the apartment, Sam packed a duffel bag. He picked up a large hook-shaped knife that he'd apparently kept in the apartment and was putting it inside the bag when Jess walked into the room.**

**"Wait, you're taking off?" She asked, looking like a combination of concerned and confused as Sam looked up. "Is this about your dad? Is he all right?" Sam laughed lightly looking down.**

**"Yeah. You know, just a little family drama." He moved the dresser and turned on the lamp that rested atop it.**

**"Your brother said he was on some kind of hunting trip." Jess commented, sitting on the bed as Sam rummaged through one of the drawers, grabbing a couple shirts, which he puts in the duffel.**

**"Oh, yeah, he's just deer hunting up at the cabin, he's probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with him. I'm just going to go bring him back." He said dismissively. It almost looks genuine, but he wouldn't look her in the face, making it obvious that he hated lying to her.**

Every occupant of the room looked horribly uncomfortable. They were all wondering what could push Sam so far away from his family that he'd rather claim his father was an alcoholic than tell the girl he obviously loved the truth.

**"What about the interview?" She asked, looking up at him.**

**"I'll make the interview. This is only for a couple days." He assured, moving around the bed. Jess got up and followed him, looking completely unconvinced.**

**"Sam, I mean, please." She started, and he stopped to look at her. "Just stop for a second. You sure you're okay?" She asked, like she wasn't sure she believed his earlier claims.**

**He laughed a little bit. "I'm fine."**

**"It's just...you won't even talk about your family."**

There was that horrific awkward yet morbidly curious silence again. They all figured there had to have been more than Sam just wanting to go to college, but none of them were sure if they really wanted to find out.

**"And now you're taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal."**

**"Hey. Everything's going to be okay. I will be back in time, I promise." He assured, pressing a tender kiss to her cheek before turning and walking out the door.**

**"At least tell me where you're going!" She called after him, but got no response.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed something in there. In the show, Dean says "You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing." but this shows a discrepancy for how long Sam's been at Stanford. I'm going on the assumption that he's just about to finish a bachelor degree (4 years). In a later episode, he says "So this is how you spent four good years of your life, huh?" Kripke has acknowledged that they made a mistake in the script - initially Sam was meant to be 20, then they aged him up to 22, but neglected to change Dean's line from "two years" to "four years." Therefore, it may have been the creators' intention that Sam has been at college for four years. That's why I changed the line.


	3. Pilot - Part 2

**"JERICHO, CALIFORNIA" appeared on the screen, while behind it, a car was heading down a completely deserted road. It was still dark outside, and the driver, a young man, smiled as he spoke into the cell phone he had pressed into his ear.**

**"Amy, I can't come over tonight. Because I've got work in the morning, that's why. ...Yeah, okay, I miss it and my dad's gonna have my ass." he explained, laughing lightly.**

"Who the heck is this?" Sam asked nobody in particular, curious about the drastic scene change. Was this still the future? He was so confused at this point, he had no idea about anything.

"How are we supposed to know?" Dean parroted Sam's earlier complaint, rolling his eyes at his brother. "It'll probably explain itself."

**The music from the radio began to distort, shifting to a high pitched whine, though the driver didn't notice. He looked over and saw a woman wearing a white dress on the side of the road. She moved almost as if she were dancing, and for a brief second, she seemed to flicker, disappearing for a half second. "Hey, ah, Amy, let me call you back?" He asked, before pausing a moment and ending the call.**

"What?! How did he not see that?" Dean objected, voice incredulous as the man seemed to not have noticed. "She disappeared!" He nearly yelled, looking outraged at the idea of someone being that unobservant. "She flickered and everything!" He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. "People are stupid." He muttered.

"You do realize you're a person, right?" Sam questioned.

"Other people are stupid." Dean corrected himself. "People who don't know what we know."

"Alright, the both of you shut up!" Bobby ordered, and the two fell silent.

**Randomly, the radio glitched again, flickering and changing channels. The young man tried several times to turn it off, though he got no result. Giving up on fixing it, he pulled up and stopped next to the woman, whose dress, upon closer inspection, was torn in several places. He leaned across the seat.**

**"Car trouble or something?" he asked. The woman didn't answer at first, resulting in a long pause. Finally, she looked at him.**

"Idiot!" Dean grumbled.

**"Dean." John warned his son to be quiet with a single word.**

**"Take me home?" She asked.**

"Her voice is the same one from the EVP!" Sam pointed out as he realized.

"Are you not going to tell him to shut up?" Dean muttered.

"Both of you." John reiterated firmly.

**"Sure, get in." He answered, reaching over and pushing the passenger side door open. The woman, who is barefoot, stepped into the car, closing the door behind her, though she was invisble through the car's back window. "So where do you live?" the man asked, eyes flicking downward frequently to stare at the woman's nearly exposed breasts.**

**"At the end of Breckenridge Road." She answered, not really even looking at the man, though he nodded.**

**"You coming from a Halloween party or something?" he asked, looking down at at the low cut of her dress again. He looked away after staring for a second, laughing nervously. "You know, a girl like you really shouldn't be alone out here." he coommented. For the first time she looked at him, before seductively pulling her skirt up over her thigh.**

**"I'm with you." She replied, making him look away. She reached up, taking his chin in her fingers and turned his face back toward her. "Do you think I'm pretty?" She asked. His eyes flicked back down to her cleavage again and he made no move to look away this time.**

**"Uh.. huh."**

**"Will you come home with me?" She asked.**

**"Um. Hell yeah." he answered, grinning. He put the car back into gear and drove off eagerly.**

"That, Sammy," Dean said, wrapping his arm around his brother's shoulder, "Is a douchebag." Sam pushed his brother's arm away.

**They pulled up to an old abandoned house at the end of the road, and the woman stared at it sadly. "Come on. You don't live here." he looked at the nearly dilapidated house in confusion.**

**"I can never go home." the woman replied, sounding almost exactly the same as she had on the recording that Dean had shown Sam. The man looked back to her, then returned his gaze to the building.**

**"What are you talking about? Nobody even lives here. Where do you live?" He asked. He turned to face her again, but she was gone. He checked the back seat as well, only to find it also empty. Nervous, he got out of his car. "That's good. Joke's over, okay? You want me to leave?" He tries to sound serious, though his voice wavers slightly. He looked around, but found no signs of life except for the chirp of crickets. Unable to help his curiosity, he stepped toward the house. "Hello? Hello?" As he approached the door, a bird flew at his face, scaring him into falling over. He yelled, leapt to his feet, and dashed back to his car, driving off the second he's in. He looked behind him, then in the rearveiw mirror. The woman was in the back seat. He yelled again and drove stright through a 'Bridge Closed' sign, stopping about halfway across. He screamed, and blood spattered the windows.**

Sam made a small gagging noise and the entire room jumped a little when the blood spatter hit.

"Well that's nice." Dean muttered with an eyeroll.

**The Impala was parked in front of a pump at an old, slightly rundown gas station. Dean came out of the convenience mart carrying junkfood in his hands. Sam was sitting shotgun, with his door open, going through a box full of cassette tapes.**

**"Hey!" Dean called out, making his brother lean out of the car and look at him. He held out the junkfood with a grin. "You want breakfast?" he asked.**

**"No thanks." Sam replied, shaking his head. "So how'd you pay for that stuff?" he asked after a beat of silence. "You and Dad still running credit card scams?" There's a sardonic bit of humor in his voice as he picks up and examines one of the casettes closer.**

"Credit card scams?" Sam questioned, tilting his head. He'd been so far unaware of the way his family got it's funding. "What's that?" he asked, turning back to his father to ask.

John rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'll tell you later Sam."

**"Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career." was Dean's response s he put removed the nozzle from the car and replaced it on the pump. "Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards." To that, Sam rolled his eyes.**

**"Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?" He challenged, swinging his legs back inside the car and closing the door.**

**"Uh, Burt Aframian." his brother answered, a practiced one in case he was asked, no doubt. He climbed into the driver's seat, setting the soda and chips down between them. "And his son Hector. Scored two cards out of the deal." he adds, sounding quite proud of himself as he closed the door. Sam smirked.**

**"That sounds about right." Sam looked down at the box of tapes in his lap. There are at least a dozen of them; some have album art, and others are hand-labeled. "I swear, man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection."**

**"Why?" Dean asked, sounding very offended at the suggestion that there's anything wrong with his collection.**

**"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes," he started, before reaching his hand back into the box. "And two, Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?" he asked, holding up a tape for each band that he named. Dean snatched away the Metallica tape, looking affronted while Sam held the rest of the box. "It's the greatest hits of mullet rock." he concluded.**

"Hey! What's wrong with Metallica?" Dean demanded, shoving Sam so that he fell off the edge of the bed. The twelve year old scowled at his older brother before huffing and sitting on the other end of the bed, deciding to stay out of his brother's reach.

"I just don't like it." Sam muttered.

**"Well, house rules, Sammy." Dean smirked while popping the tape into the player. "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole." He put the Metallica case back in the box of tapes and started the engine.**

**"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old." Sam commented, as Back in Black began to blast from the speakers. "It's just Sam, okay?"**

Sam looked down at himself. "I'm not chubby."

"No you aren't Sammy." Dean replied, laughing. "Not yet anyway, got a full year ahead of you." he teased.

**"Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud!" his older brother yelled, gesturing vaguely to his ear and smiling before pulling the car back out onto the road.**

**A few hours later and they drove past a sign that read "JERICHO 7", while Sam talked on his cell phone.**

**"Thank you." He replied to somebody, before closing the phone and turning to Dean. "All right. So, there's no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue, so that's something, I guess." he said without enthusiasm. Dean glanced over at him for a brief second, before returning his attention to the road. A little bit ahead of them, two police cars and several officers were on a bridge.**

**"Check it out." Dean said, getting Sam's attention, who leaned forward for a closer look.**

**They pulled over, and both looked on for a few seconds before Dean cut off the engine and reached over to open the glove compartment. He pulled out a box full of ID cards with his and John's faces; FBI, DEA, and the like. He picked one upand grinned over at Sam, who was staring.**

"Huh." Dean looked back at his father and grinned, "Looks like we get good at that." He commented. They'd tried fake IDs like that before, but so far, they hadn't ever come out right. "That'll make things easier."

"Yeah, it would." John agreed.

Sam looked down at his hands. He knew full well that that was illegal, as was credit card fraud. To him, it seemed like the future Dean and John were more criminals than hunters.

**"Let's go." He got of the car without waiting for his brother.**

**On the bridge, a deputy leaned over the railing to yell down to two men in wetsuits who were poking around the river. "You guys find anything?" he asked. After getting a negative reply, he turned back to the car in the middle of the bridge. Another deputy was at the driver's side, looking around the interior of the looked back to the other deputy.**

**"No sign of struggle, no footprints, no fingerprints. Spotless. It's almost too clean."**

**As if on cue, Dean and Sam walked onto the crime scene, looking for all the world like they belong there.**

**"So, this kid Troy. He's dating your daughter, isn't he?" the first deputy asked, looking to his comrade.**

**"Yeah."**

**"How's Amy doing?"**

**"She's putting up missing posters downtown."**

**It was there that Dean interjected suddenly. "You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" He asked, successfully grabbing the attention of the deputies. The first one straightened up quickly.**

**"And who are you?" He asked, almost demanded. Dean flashed his badge, unconcerned.**

**"Federal marshals."**

John nodded in approval over the fact that they hadn't gone by FBI. No doubt that real agents would've gotten involved and would end up causing trouble if Sam and Dean had gotten caught. Federal Marshals wouldn't be questioned nearly as much as FBI would.

**"You two are a little young for marshals, aren't you?" The deputy asked, casting doubtful looks between Dean and Sam.**

**"Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." Dean replied with a smirk and a laugh, before moving over to the car. "You did have another one just like this, correct?" He asked again.**

**"Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road. There've been others before that." Dean looked a bit closer to the car while Sam turned to face the officer.**

**"So, this victim, you knew him?" He asked, voice considerably softer and less sarcastic then Dean's had been a moment before. The deputy nodded.**

**"Town like this, everybody knows everybody." he answered, glancing over at Dean, who was circling the car and looking around.**

**"Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?" he asked, looking up from the backseat.**

**"No. Not so far as we can tell."**

**"So what's the theory?" Sam asked, stepping closer to Dean behind the car.**

**"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?"**

**"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys." Dean commented. Sam stomped on his foot harshly, before attempting to amend**   **his brother's rudeness.**

"Why would you mouth off to the cops?" Bobby asked aloud. "You piss 'em off and they won't work with you. Doesn't take a genius to figure out."

"I can't tell if you're talking to me or the future me." Dean commented jokingly, turning to look at the grizzled hunter behind him.

"I'm talking to both of ya, ya idjit."

**"Thank you for your time." He said, before walking away, Dean right behind him. As they walled away, Dean reached up and smacked Sam hard on the back of the head. "Ow! What was that for?"**

"Really Dean?" Sam asked with a roll of his eyes.

**"Why'd you have to step on my foot?" Dean countered.**

"Really Sam?" Dean mocked.

**"Why do you have to talk to the police like that?" Dean looked at Sam and moved in front of him, forcing his little brother to stop walking.**

**"Come on. They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves." Sam for a moment looked like he was going to answer, but he cleared his throat instead and looked over Dean's shoulder, who turned. A sheriff and two FBI agents were walking in their direction.**

**"Can I help you boys?" The sheriff asked, looking between them.**

**"No, sir, we were just leaving." Dean answered, tone a bit more respectful than he'd been to the deputy. As the FBI agents walked past Dean, he nodded at each of them, smirking. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully." Dean and Sam headed past the sheriff, who turned to watch them go.**

**A young woman was tacking up posters with the missing man's picture with the caption "MISSING TROY SQUIRE" when Dean and Sam approached.**

**"I'll bet you that's her." Dean suggested, moving toward her.**

"Well no duh." Dean mocked his older self. "She's literally doing exactly what the cop said she'd be doing."

**"Yeah." Sam agreed.**

**"You must be Amy." the older Winchester greeted with a smile. "Troy told us about you. We're his uncles. I'm Dean, this is Sammy."**

"How are they-" he paused, unsure of how to address the future version of him and his brother. "..we supposed to be his uncles?" Sam asked, confused. "We look the same age as him."

**"People believe what you tell them to believe Sam." John explained simply.**

**"Like I said," Dean interjected, "People are stupid."**

**"He never mentioned you to me." Amy commented, walking away, though Sam and Dean walked with her.**

**"Well, that's Troy, I guess. We're not around much, we're up in Modesto." Dean explained, as Sam slowly stepped around in front of her.**

**"So, we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around."**

**Another young woman came up behind Amy, placing a careful hand on her arm. "Hey, are you okay?" She asked gently.**

**"Yeah.." Amy mumbled.**

**"Do you mind if we ask you a couple questions?" Sam asked, looking at the two of them now.**

**In the diner, the four of them were seated in a booth, Sam and Dean sitting opposite of Amy and her friend.**

**"I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did." Amy explained. Sam leaned forward a little bit.**

**"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?"**

**"No. Nothing I can remember." She answered, shaking her head.**

**"I like your necklace." He commented.**

"Oh are you guys best gal-pals now?" Dean teased.

"Shut up. There's probably something important about it." Sam said defensively, face hot.

**Amy looked down at it, and picked it up, holding it between her fingers. It was a silver pentagram in a circle on a leather strip. "Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents." She laughed a little bit. "With all that devil stuff." To that, Sam chuckled a little bit and looked down, then up again as Dean looked over.**

"See! It was relevant." Sam defended himself. "Kinda."

"Yeah, okay." his older brother returned, voice dripping in sarcasm as he rolled his eyes.

**"Actually," he explained, "it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing." Dean arched his eyebrows at Sam, rolling his eyes a bit.**

"Told you. You're a nerd."

"No I'm not!"

**"Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries." He muttered, taking his arm off the back of Sam's seat and leaned forward. "Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything.." he trailed off, letting the question hang in the air. Amy and her friend shared a brief look. "What is it?" Dean asked. The friend shifted a bit.**

**"Well, it's just... I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk."**

**"What do they talk about?" Both brothers asked the question in unison.**

"Oh god. Please tell me we don't do that often." Dean pleaded, sounding horrified by the idea of he and Sam's mind running on the same page.

"That is really kinda creepy." Sam agreed.

**"It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago." the friend explained, as Dean looked at Sam, who nodded, listening attentively. "Well, supposedly she's still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever." Dean and Sam looked at each other**

**In the library, a web browser was open to the archive search page for the Jericho Herald. The words "Female Murder Hitchhiking" were typed into the search box. Dean clicked 'go', only for the screen to tell him that there were no results. Dean replaced 'Hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway" only to get the same response, or lack thereof. Sam simply sat next to his brother, watching.**

**"Let me try." he offered, reaching for the mouse. His hand was only on it for a fraction of a second before Dean smacked it away.**

**"I got it."**

**Having none of that, Sam pushed Dean's chair out of the way and took over, ignoring his brother's protests, which included a punch to the shoulder.**

"Seriously?" Dean asked.

"What? Not my fault you couldn't find anything." Sam replied defensively.

"Ten years in between, and they still act just the same." Bobby commented with a pointed look to John, who chuckled a bit. The entire room stilled. John had just laughed. For the first time since god only knew when.

**"You're such a control freak." he grumbled. Sam ignored him.**

**"So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?" He asked, and though it was rhetorical, Dean answered with 'yeah'. "Well, maybe it's not murder." he reasoned, replacing "Murder" with "Suicide" and immediately found an article entitled "Suicide on Centennial." Dean glanced at his brother, who opened the article, dated April 25, 1981, and summarized the article quickly. "This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in**   **the river." He scrolled down and found a picture.**

"Ha!" Sam said with a proud smirk. "See? I did know what I was doing... or will do. Whatever."

"Shut up." Dean muttered.

**"Does it say why she did it?" Dean asked.**

**"Yeah."**

**"What?"**

**"An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die." Dean raised his eyebrows as Sam explained, making a small noise in the back of his throat. ""Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it," said husband Joseph Welch.'" Sam read aloud, scrolling through some more pictures before Dean stopped him.**

**"The bridge look familiar to you?"**

**It was dark by the time Dean and Sam walked along the bridge they'd been on earlier. They stopped and leaned against the railing and looking down at the river that surged below.**

"I don't think jumping in there was much fun." Dean remarked. Falling into water moving that fast could not be pleasant, and it was easy to see how quickly a person could drown in that. The future him, though, apparently had no such concerns.

**"So this is where Constance took the swan dive." Dean commented, eyes on the water. Sam turned to look at his brother.**

**"So you think Dad would have been here?" he asked.**

"Well duh." Dean said with an eyeroll. "What else would Dad do on a hunt besides actually hunting the thing?"

**"Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him." Was the answer he got as Dean continued walking across the bridge, Sam shortly behind him.**

**"Okay, so now what?"**

**"Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while." That drew Sam up short, and he stopped.**

"But Monday." Sam argued with the television. He had a law school interview Monday, he didn't have time for 'a while.'

**"Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by Monday—" he started, and Dean turned to face him.**

**"Monday. Right. The interview." It was clear by the look on Dean's face that he didn't like it at all.**

**"Yeah."**

**"Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?" His voice was mocking, almost cold, and Sam's face darkened for a moment.**

"Why is that such a bad thing?" Sam dared to ask, looking between his brother and the two adults in the room. Why would it be such a bad thing to be normal? Almost everybody else was, and they all seemed perfectly fine with it, happy even. Was it such a bad thing that he wanted that too?

**"Maybe. Why not?"**

**"Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?" Dean's voice lowered some, and the tone of it implied that there was a lot buried that nobody talked about. It was a dig at his brother, he knew it, and it worked too, because it triggered something in Sam, whose jaw tightened and who stepped forward slowly.**

Sam shifted uncomfortably and wondered what he would do in the future that was so bad Dean could use it as ammunition against him. He figured it had to bad stuff. Seeing the look on his own face, heavy with age that shouldn't be there, assured him that he'd done horrible things.

John looked down at the closed book on the desk and sighed, as he tried not to think about what could happen in the future that would constitute a 'the things you've done' phrase being directed at Sammy. He looked at his youngest son for a moment, and tried not to feel guilty.

Bobby realized, with those two questions, that Sam may have gotten out of hunting, but he sure as hell hadn't made it out unscathed. He'd been forced to do things he didn't want to, been forced to take lives and see other people loose loved ones, just like every hunter had. He'd just done it at a younger age.

Dean went stiff as he saw what his older self was doing. He'd done lesser versions himself. It was guilt, something he sometimes used on Sammy to get him to not tell Dad something. It was subtle manipulation in the phrase of a question, and based on the look of older Sam's face, it still worked.

**"No, and she's not ever going to know."**

**"Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are." He assured, turning around and walking away. Sam, of course, followed, though at a greater distance than he had before.**

**"And who's that?"**

**"One of us." Dean replied with a motion of his arms. Sam stepped quickly forward, getting in front of his brother and stopping.**

**"No, I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life." There was more anger in his voice now, mixed with a bitterness that sounded as if it'd been building for years.**

Sam almost felt proud of himself. He liked knowing that, someday, he would have the strength to stand up to his dad and Dean and tell them that he didn't want to be a hunter like them. On the other hand though, they now knew that, and he felt their eyes on him.

Nobody breathed as the tension mounted, both on and off the screen.

**"You have a responsibility to—" Dean started, but Sam cut him off.**

**"To Dad? And his crusade?" Sam snapped, voice quieter but more venomous.**

Dean's breath hitched and his eyes snapped to Sammy.

John blinked. Crusade? Is that what Sam thought this was? Anger and grief intermingled in his veins as he looked at Sammy.

**"If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like." Some of the anger faded, and for a moment, Sam looked exhausted past his years. "And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back." With that, Dean lurched forward, grabbing Sam by the collar and shoving him against the railing. Sam didn't even react, just let it happen, didn't even fight back, like he'd expected it.**

They were all staring at Sam, who just blinked a couple times, still in shock over what the him on the screen had just said.

"Well if that's the way you feel Sammy." Dean almost growled in his brother's direction, voice furious and condescending at the same time.

"Dean... I-" Sam tried to explain, that he didn't feel that way, at least not all the way yet. Yeah, he had his doubts, and he did want to be a regular person, but he wasn't angry at Dad, and still wanted the thing that killed mom dead. He shut his mouth though, not wanting to do any more damage than his future self already had.

**"Don't talk about her like that."**

Dean silently cheered on his older self.

**A moment later, he released his brother and walked away, only to see Constance, the woman, standing at the edge of the bridge. "Sam." At the sound of his name, Sam straightened up and moved to his brother's side. Constance looked over at them, before stepping forward off the edge. Sam and Dean ran to the railing again, looking into the water. "Where'd she go?"**

**"I don't know." Sam answered. Not a second later, the Impala roared to life behind them, and they both turned to look.**

**"What the—"**

**"Who's driving your car?"**

**Dean pulled the keys out of his pocked and jingled them. Sam looked at them for a moment, before the car jerked into motion, heading straight for them. They both turned and ran, before diving over the railing.**

**Back on the bridge, the car came to a stop.**


	4. Pilot - Part 3

**Sam was clinging to a bit of metal on the side of the bridge, legs dangling below him. He grunted occasionally as he started working to pull the rest of himself up. After a moment he managed to get to a safer spot, where he sat. Free of the immediate danger, his eyes went to the river below him.**

The room was still tense as all holy hell from earlier. So, in the way of the Winchesters, and occasionally the Singers, nobody said anything about it. It was basically just ignored, making the room feel heavy and dark with apprehension.

**"Dean?" he yelled, looking down, "Dean!?" Louder that time as he couldn't see his brother at first. He let out a breath he'd been holding as his filthy older brother crawled out of the water and into the mud, panting.**

**"What?" He yelled up, annoyance in his voice.**

**"Hey! Are you all right?" He laughed, relieved when Dean held up an A-ok sign at him, and scooted away from the edge of the ledge he'd crawled onto.**

**"I'm super."**

Sam wanted to question that. If that fall had killed Constance, than how had it not killed Dean? He wasn't complaining or anything, he didn't want his brother dead, he was just curious. He didn't say it though, because as he opened his mouth to, he remembered that pretty much everyone in the room thought he hated them.

"I don't think all that stuff." He muttered, surely too quiet for John and Bobby to hear. Dean did though, and when he looked again at his brother, his gaze was a little bit softer than it had been before.

**A little while later, back on the bridge, Dean shut the hood of his car and leaned on it, absolutely covered in mud from head to toe.**

**"Your car all right?" Sam asked, coming around the side of the Impala.**

"My car?" Dean asked, voice perking up a little bit. He loved the Impala, but it was always Dad's car, it'd been his dad's since before he and Sammy were even born. He never really expected to call it his, though apparently it would come to be.

"It's not yours yet." John pointed out, like he knew where his son's mind was going. His voice was more tense than it had been earlier, when he'd laughed. It was back to being hard and cold. He'd shifted back from father-mode back into military-mode.

**"Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now." Dean stood up straighter so he could yell "That Constance chick, what a bitch!" into the night, before resuming his earlier position with something like a sigh.**

**"Well she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure." Sam commented, looking back to the edge of the bridge where they'd seen her before settling on the hood next to Dean, who threw up his arms in obvious frustration, before flicking mud off his hands. Sam sniffed and looked at his older brother. "You smell like a toilet."**

"Really Sammy?" Dean asked with a snort. "Way to be the supportive brother." He said it in a teasing voice, but Sam couldn't help but to wonder if it was actually said with a double meaning. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and instead forced himself to smile.

"It's probably true though." he argued back, with little vigor.

**Back at the hotel, Dean threw a MasterCard on the guest ledger. The name was Hector Aframian, just like he'd said earlier to Sam. He was still soaked int the mud, though it was mostly dried by then.**

**"One room please." The clerk picked up the card and looked at it for a moment.**

**"You guys having a reunion or something?" he asked, tilting the card to look at the name.**

**"What do you mean?" Sam asked, while Dean's eyes just widened.**

**"I had another guy, Burt Aframian. He came and bought out a room for the whole month." Dean turned and looked at Sam.**

That, to Dean, was the most surprising. Rarely did they rent rooms that far in advance. They usually paid a day at a time, that way if they had to bail in the middle of the night, it wouldn't create as much suspicion. He wondered if that in itself wasn't some sort of clue as to where Dad was.

**The motel door swung open, Sam on the other side having picked the lock. He slid the pick back into his pocket as he stood, Dean just outside to play lookout, until Sam grabbed his shoulder and forcefully yanked him inside and closed the door behind them.**

**They looked around, to see every vertical surface completely covered in pinned up papers; maps, newspapers clippings, pictures, notes. There were books on the desk and junk on the floor and bed, and even something marked with the Hazardous Materials symbol.**

**"Whoa.." Sam breathed. Dean turned on a light by the bed and picked up a half-eaten hamburger sitting there as Sam stepped over a line of salt on the floor. He sniffed the food and recoiled.**

"Never thought I'd see foot you didn't eat, no matter how disgusting." Sam teased, trying to make the atmosphere like it had been earlier. It just felt dark and uncomfortable in the room, when earlier it'd been light and almost happy. It'd been easier to be in the room with his father then than it had in months. Now it was just like always.

**"I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least." He reasoned, as his little brother pressed three fingers into the salt on the floor, before flicking it off and looking up at Dean.**

**"Salt, cats-eye shells.. he was worried." The younger hunter reasoned, pulling himself back up to his full height. "Trying to keep something from coming in." He glanced over at Dean, who walked along one of the longer walls, looking at the papers attached to the wall there, and made his way over. "What have you got here?" he asked, looking over his brother's shoulder.**

**"Centennial HIghway victims." Dean answered simply. "I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?" He wondered aloud as Sam crossed the room behind him, looking at the papers on the other walls. There was more than just the current case everywhere. There were witches, people being burned alive, a column about "Devils + Demons", another about "Sirens, Witches, and the possessed", a wooden pentacle, and a note the said 'Woman in White" above a printout of the Jericho newspaper article they'd seen online about Constance's suicide.**

**Sam turned on another lamp. "Dad figured it out." He informed Dean, who turned to take a look.**

"Of course he did." Dean muttered, not at all surprised. Almost always, Dad figured out cases that seemed much more difficult than that one, and it sure as heck rarely took three weeks. His main question was, if dad figured out the case, then why was it still happening. He almost asked it out loud but caught himself, not sure he wanted to throw that question out into the room right now. He had a feeling it'd be push the room out of the pan and into the hellfire.

**"What do you mean?" he asked.**

**"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."**

John cast a look at Bobby. He had no idea what that was, a woman in white. He was met with an almost identical look of confusion of his own. Bobby didn't know what that was either, yet apparently they'd find out in later years.

**Dean took a second look at all of the missing men's pictures. "You sly dogs." He commented, as if they could hear him, before turning back to Sam. "Alright, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."**

"So it's like a spirit." Bobby reasoned. He knew you burned the body for ghosts, so it wasn't exactly a leap to assume that, if the same was true for the 'woman in white' that she was a some sort of spirit as well.

**"She might have another weakness." Sam suggested, still looking at the article on the wall.**

**"Well, Dad would want to make sure." Dean said with complete certainty, walking over to Sam. "He'd dig her her up. Does it say where she's buried?" He asked, glancing at the paper.**

**"No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband." Sam suggested, tapping the picture of Joseph Welch. "If he's still alive." he added, because if the date on the printout was correct, than the man was sixty four years old.**

**"Alright." Dean agreed, "Why don't you, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up." Dean suggested, starting to turn away.**

"I feel bad for that poor shower." Sam tried again, to tease, but was met with only stony silence, even if Dean did give him an almost playful reproach look.

**Sam turned with him. "Hey Dean?" He asked, seeming almost nervous to do so as his brother pivoted back toward him. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry." He apologized, voice sincere. Dean held up a hand though.**

**"No chickflick moments." He said, kind of like a decree. Sam laughed and nodded.**

**"Alright. Jerk."**

**"Bitch."**

Surprisingly, the apology and Dean's apparent acceptance of it, did wonders to lighten the mood in the room. A lot of the strain released, like a a weight had been lifted off the room, and even though it wasn't as light as it'd been before, it was better.

**Sam laughed again as Dean disappeared into the bathroom. He noticed something, his smile disappearing, and crossed over for a closer look. A rosary hung in front of a large mirror, and stuck into the mirror frame was a photo of his father sitting on the hood of the Impala, next to a younger version of him and his brother. Dean in a baseball cap, and himself on his father's lap. He took the photo off the mirror and held it between his fingers, smiling sadly.**

More than anything, Sam was surprised at the sentimentality of it. His dad never seemed to care much for relationships, and often never saw past whatever hunt he happened to be on that week, so the thought of him carrying a family picture with him, was almost too odd for him to wrap his head around.

"That was, what, seven, eight years ago?" Dean asked, looking back to his father curiously.

"Eight." John confirmed, feeling slightly uncomfortable. It wasn't like he hated his children, far from it, he just wasn't good at expressing his care for them. And though he himself hadn't left the picture, his future self had, it still felt like he'd just stumbled through an admission of affection and was a bit nervous as a result.

**Later, when the sunlight was still streaming through the windows, Sam paced, holding his phone to his ear, before sitting on the bed. A voicemail message from Jess playing in his ear.**

_**"Hey, it's me, it's almost ten-twenty Saturday night-"** _

**Dean, clean again, came out of the bathroom and grabbed his jacket, shrugging it on one shoulder. "Hey man. I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in the diner down the street. You want anything?" He asked. Sam shook his head no. Dean looked doubtful before adding, in a playful voice, "Aframian's buying." But Sam just shook his head.**

**"Mm-mm."**

**Dean left the motel room, getting the rest of his jacket on as he walked across the parking lot. He looked over and saw a police car, where the motel clerk was talking to the deputies they'd spoken to at the abandoned car on the bridge. The clerk pointed at Dean, who turned away and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.**

"Uh-oh." Dean's eyes widened a bit as he watched himself get nervous from the arrival of the police officers.

"Uh-oh is right." Bobby agreed, frowning at the screen. He knew that cops meant well, and were really just trying to do their jobs, but they often got in the way, and as a result often got hurt or killed. It was mainly due to such occurrences that he wasn't exactly a fan of law enforcement.

**Back in the room, Sam was sitting on the bed, still listening to the message.**

_**"So come home soon, okay? I love you."** _

"Like I said." Dean commented with a smirk directed toward his little brother. "Your future life is a Romcom."

**The phone beeped and he looked at it, pressing the answer button and putting it back against his ear.**

**"What?"**

**Outside, the deputies were approaching Dean.**

**"Dude, five-oh, take off."**

**Sam stood slowly, "What about you?"**

"Really Sammy? Just get the hell out." Dean urged, sounding only halfway sarcastic.

**"Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad." Dean hung up as the deputies approached, and he turned and grinned at them. "Problem officers?" He asked brightly - too brightly.**

**"Where's your partner?" one of them asked.**

**"Partner? What, what partner?" Dean countered, deflecting badly. One of the cops glanced over his shoulder and jerked his thumbr towards the motel room,**   **while the other one headed toward it. Sam saw the officer and darted away from the window.**

**Dean fidgeted.**

**"So. Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?" The officer demanded, to which Dean only smirked.**

**"My boobs." A second later, and the Winchester was slammed over the hood of the cop car, listening to his rights being read to him.**

"Really Dean!?" Sam yelped, looking up at his big brother with a mix of annoyance and disbelief. "What the hell? Why in the name of God would you mouth off to the cops -again-? It's like you have a secret wish to be put in prison."

**In the police station, the sheriff walked into the room, holding a large box, that he set on the table where Dean was sitting. He went around to the other end to face Dean.**

**"So you want to give us your real name?" He asked.**

**"I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent." Dean insisted, trying not to smile as he claimed the name of the musician as his own. The sheriff wasn't the least bit amused.**

"Because nobodies gonna recognize  _that_  name." Bobby said, rolling his eyes at Dean's antics.

"Ya gotta go with what ya got Bobby." Dean replied, unconcerned.

**"I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here."**

**"We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?" Dean asked without missing a beat, looking at the man with an unconcerned smile.**

**"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall." He stated, while Dean just rolled his eyes and looked away. "Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."**

"How could you be a suspect?" Sam asked, tilting his head. "You'd have been like two years old when the first person went missing Dean."

"Remember, I was there." John pointed out. "They might think he's a partner."

**"Well that makes sense." Dean muttered, voice sarcastic. "Because when the first one went missing in '82, I was three." The Sheriff though, wasn't at all swayed.**

**"I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me. Dean." He tossed a down a brown, leather bound journal on the table between himself and Dean. "This his?" Dean just stared at it while the sheriff sat on the edge of the table, flipping through it. It was filled with newspaper clippings, notes, and pictures, just like what'd been on the wall in John's hotel room. "I thought that might be your name." He continued. "See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out—I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy."**

"You never leave your journal behind." Dean said aloud, not even realizing that his brain-to-mouth filter had stopped working again.

John looked down at his journal - the same thing, just less full and worn - a few feet away on the desk. He took the thing with him everywhere, it had it's own little hollow in the Impala, had left a small imprint in every jacket he'd ever owned in the last twelve years. He would never, under any circumstances, leave it alone in a hotel room if Dean and Sammy weren't there, especially if he was on an active hunt. It held every bit of information he had on every bit of supernatural anything he knew about.

**Dean couldn't help but to lean forward for a closer look.**

**"But I found this, too." The cop flipped through the journal to a page that read "DEAN 32-111", circled with nothing else on the page. "Now. You're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means." Dean just stared at the page for a moment, before looking up.**

**Meanwhile, Sam knocked on a grimy, fence covered window. An old man opened it, wearing a baseball cap and squinting against the bright light from outside.**

**"Hi," the hunter greeted. "Are you Joseph Welch?"**

"No, he's the Easter Bunny." Dean interjected caustically.

**"Yeah."**

**Joseph and Sam walked down the junk-filled driveway, the older man holding the photo Sam found on John's motel room mirror. "Yeah. He was older, but that's him." He confirmed, handing the picture back. "He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."**

**"That's right." Sam confirmed, going with it. "We're working on a story together."**

**"Well I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?"**

**"About your wife Constance?" Sam asked.**

"Really Sammy? You're 2-0 on asking stupid questions."

"Shut up, ya jerk."

"Bitch."

**"He asked me where she was buried." The man sounded like a mixture between confused and revulsed.**

**"And where is that again?" he inquired.**

**"What, I gotta go through this twice?"**

**"It's fact-checking." Sam explained. "If you don't mind."**

**"In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge."**

**"And why did you move?"**

"Because your children dying in the house isn't enough?"

"Seriously Dean, knock it off." Sam burst, quickly growing irritated with Dean's commentary that seemed to be nothing more than high-and-mighty comments on Sam's mistakes or pointless questions.

"But you're asking stupid questions!" Dean objected, looking seriously like he didn't understand why Sam could be getting upset.

**"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died." His voice shook a little bit for the first time as he mentioned the death of his children in the old house, and Sam stopped walking. Joseph stopped right behind him.**

**"Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"**

**"No way." he replied, without a moment's hesitation. "Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known." His voice was fond and smiled just a little bit as he recalled his late wife.**

**"So you had a happy marriage?" It was there that the man finally hesitated, just a moment.**

**"Definitely."**

"Liar." Sam accused, knowing well what that beat of hesitation.

"Now who won't shut up?" Dean fired back at his brother.

"Boys.." John warned, yet again, as his sons began to argue.

**Sam nodded, but didn't look convinced. "Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time." He turned and walked toward the Impala, and Joseph headed back for his home. Sam waited a moment, before stopping and looking back.** **"Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?"**

**Joseph turned around, looking confused. "A what?"**

**"A woman in white." Sam repeated. "Or sometimes a weeping woman?" The old man just looked at him.**

"What the hell are you doin' boy?" Bobby asked, confused. Sam had gotten his information, what could he possibly have to gain by going back and explaining the lore?

**"It's a ghost story." The hunter began to explain. "Well, it's more a phenomenon, really." He started back toward the man slowly. "Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women." He came to a stop right in front of the widower. "You understand. but all share the same story."**

**"Boy, I don't care much for nonsense." He replied, voice almost, but not quite, annoyed, and walked away. It didn't have the desired affect though, because Sam simply followed him, still talking.**

"Oh snap Sammy." Dean teased, watching as his brother persisted in making sure Joseph Welch knew what he'd started.

**"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them." That brought the older man up short. "And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children." Then Joseph turned around. "Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking down roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."**

**"You think...you think that has something to do with...Constance? You smartass!" There was anger in his voice as he stepped closer to Sam.**

**"You tell me." He retorted, without batting an eye.**

"Sammy, you're going all hardass." Dean said with a laugh. "I like it."

"Glad I could do something to impress you."

**"I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes."**

"Which is code for being a douchebag and cheating on your wife." Dean translated smugly.

**"But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!" Joseph's whole face shakes, though it was unclear whether from grief or anger. After a long moment he turned away, and Sam sighed.**

**Back at the police station, an increasingly annoyed Dean was still sitting at the table from before.**

**"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo." He said, exasperated and still referring to the page in the journal, and it was clear that the officer had no intention of believing his story.**

**"We gonna do this all night long?" he asked. A second later, a deputy leaned into the room.**

**"We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road." He explained. The sheriff looked back over to Dean.**

**"You have to go to the bathroom?" He deadpanned.**

**"No."**

**"Good." He reached over and handcuffed Dean to the table and left.**

"Okay, the police are officially the biggest dumbasses in the world." Dean concluded. "At least make sure the book's far enough away that they can't reach the paperclips." He folded his arms over his chest as his future self began to do the obvious thing.

**Looking around, the hunter caught sighed of a paper clip poking out of the journal. He pulled it out and looked at it. Moments later, when the Sheriff and Deputy were gearing up to leave, he was already out of the cuffs, watching them through through the window in the door. He ducked out of sighed as the deputy approached the door and waited for his opportunity.**

**Later, he climbed down the fire escape, father's journal in hand.**

"Good thinking." Bobby approved, nodding once.

"It's not exactly brain surgery." John commented. He hadn't intended to discredit or make Bobby's almost-compliment any less true, he just knew how things would go to Dean's head if he wasn't kept in check, and with his son still having a lot to learn about hunting, arrogance could spell big trouble later on.

**Sam was driving the Impala when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out and answered it.**

**Dean was in a phone booth.** **"Fake 911 phone call? Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal." He teased, voice playful. Sam just grinned.**

**"You're welcome."**

**"Aww! Little Sammy's finally joining the dark side!" Dean cooed in a sugar-sweet voice as he looked over at Sam.**

**"Shut up." he grumbled.**

**"Listen, we gotta talk."**

**Sam shrugged off his brothers words. "Tell me about it. So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop."**

**"Sammy, would you shut up for a second?" Dean interjected.**

**"I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet." Sam continued, clearly not understanding what Dean was trying to tell him.**

"Seriously dude? Just shut your mouth!" Dean exclaimed, exasperation in his tone, even as his future self was saying something similar. "'Would you shut up for a second' isn't code for 'please keep talking!'"

"What can I say?" Sam replied, looking at his brother with an expression that was too innocent. "I learned about not listening from the best."

"I can't even argue with that." His older brother conceded reluctantly.

**"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho." Dean finally just spit out.**

**"What?" Sam asked, voice short and clipped. "How do you know?"**

**"I've got his journal."**

**"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing." The youngest Winchester's voice was laced with concern.**

**"Yeah, well, he did this time."**

"Please don't tell me that I turn into that dude who points out the glaringly obvious." Dean groaned.

**"What's it say?" Sam knew that if his father left the journal, then he left a message in it.**

**"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."**

**"Coordinates." He said in a knowing voice. "Where to?"**

**"I'm not sure yet."**

**"I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?" He looked up and saw Constance in the middle of the road. He gasped and slammed on the brakes, dropping his phone in the process.**

Sam jumped a bit, jerking his body with the suddenness of the spirit's arrival. He almost felt embarrassed by his reaction, at least until he realized that everybody else in the room had been just as surprised as he'd been.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean blurted, earning a reproachful look from his father, who wasn't overly fond of Dean's frequent cursing.

**The car passed right through her as Sam brought it to a halt.**

**"Sam? Sam!" Dean asked into the phone, hearing the squealing brakes and the thud of the phone hitting the floorboards.**

**Sam breathed hard for a second as the car stopped, but didn't see Constance in the back seat, until she spoke to him.**

**"Take me home." He just stares at her in the rearview mirror. "Take me home!" She repeated, louder and more insistent.**

"Talk about desperate. Didn't think anybody'd ever want ya that bad Sammy." Dean teased, winking at his little brother, who looked sufficiently mortified, playfully.

**"No." Sam replied, voice calm but firm. Constance glared at him and the doors locked themselves. The hunter tried to reopen them, but the gas pedal pressed down and the car began to drive itself. He tried to steer, but Constance was doing that too. He kept trying to get the door open, but to no avail. In the back seat, Constance flickered.**

**The car eventually pulled up in front of the abandoned house on Breckenridge Road, where the old Welch house was. The engine finally shut off, as did the lights.**

**"Don't do this." Sam said, voice more of a suggestion than any type of plea. Constance flickered again, and spoke, voice sad.**

**"I can never go home."**

**"You're scared to go home." he realized, but when he looked back again, Constance was gone. His eyes flicked around and back, before he saw her in the passenger seat. She climbed onto his lap, shoving him back against the seat hard enough to recline it as he struggled.**

**"Hole me. I'm so cold." She pleaded, pressing herself into him.**

"Don't do it Sam." Bobby urged from the back of the room, gaze intense as he watched. He hadn't even realized that he'd spoken aloud at first.

"If Sammy was so stupid he'd do it, I doubt he'd have even made it into college." Dean pointed out, "Let alone survive our life." His voice was light enough, but there was a tension in him that was still concerned for his little brother, even if in the future he was some kind of gigantic mountain person.

"I... I think that was a compliment.." Sam realized with a blink, looking at his older brother. "So.. thanks?"

**He tried to get away, pulling his head back and baring his teeth as she touched him, so it was hard to tell if he was fighting her or his own will for a moment.**

**"You can't kill me." Sam stated, stilling completely. "I'm not unfaithful." He took a deep breath through his nose. "I've never been." He groaned and leaned his head back for a brief second.**

"Atta boy Sammy. Way to not be a douchebag." Dean cheered, reaching to hit Sam's shoulder, who slid back in time to miss the blow.

**"You will be." She replied with absolute certainty. "Just hold me." She kissed him as he continued to struggle, reaching for the keys.**

"Okay.. now this is getting kinda uncomfortable to watch."

"At least you're not watching yourself get assaulted by a ghost." Sam replied, feeling his skin heat up as he pointedly looked away from the screen.

"You're right. I"m watching my little brother get assaulted by a ghost, because that's much better."

**At which point she pulled back and disappeared, a flash of something behind her face as she vanished. Sam looked around in a moment of peace, before screaming out in pain and falling backward, yanking his hoodie open. There were five new holes burned in the fabric, matching to Constance's fingers as she flickered in front of him, her hand reaching into his chest.**

The room stilled, the sound of future Sam's screams filling the room for a heartbeat. They all knew the risks that came with hunting, you got hurt - it was just part of it. Knowing that was one thing, but watching someone be, for lack of a better word, tortured, and having no means to help was agony in itself. Especially for Dean, because he couldn't see past the fact that the person being hurt was  _Sammy_. John's eyes narrowed, as he ignored a flash of emotion that rushed through him and made him want to do something, anything, to help - even though he knew he couldn't.

**A gunshot rang out, shattering the window and startling the spirit. Dean approached, still firing at her. She glared at him, then vanished, then reappeared. The hunter continued firing until she disappeared again.**

"Thanks."

"No problem." Dean replied, voice smug. "What am I if I'm not saving my baby brother's ass?" he asked.

"A jackass yourself?" That time, Sam had to dodge a boot that was aimed for his head. It hit his shoulder instead, and most definetely would leave a mark, but he kinda knew he deserved it.

"Boys stop." John ordered, for what seemed like the hundredth time in the past thirty minutes.

**Sam sat up and started the car. "I'm taking you home." He hit the gas, driving the car forward as Dean stared. The Impala crashed into the house with a loud noise, taking out the front wall. Dean ran into the wreckage, gun in hand, to the passenger side of the car.**

**"Sam! Sam! You okay?" He asked, almost demanded, as he yanked the door open.**

**"Yeah, I think." Sam grunted.**

**"Can you move?"**

**"Yeah." Sam answered, shifting. "Help me?" Dean leaned through, reaching for his brother.**

"That had to suck to say." Dean commented with a small chuckle.

**Constance picked up a large framed photograph, of a woman and two children, Constance and her son and daughter.**

**Dean, meanwhile, helped Sam out of the Impala.**

**"There ya go." He grunted, closing the car door. The brothers turned to see Constance; She looked up, glaring at them and threw the picture down. A bureau**   **slid across the floor, pinning Sam and Dean against the their car, lights flickering. The woman looked around, scared, as water began to pour down the staircase. At the top were a boy and a girl, the same ones from the photograph. They held hands and spoke in chorus.**

 **"You've**   **come home to us, Mommy."**

"Talk about creepy." Bobby said, barely suppressing a shudder. Kid ghosts were always eerie as it was, but two of them, talking at the same time made it even worse. John nodded in agreement, as did the boys, and it made him want to chuckle that the one thing they could all agree on was the creepiness of ghost children of all things.

**Constance looked at them, distraught. Suddenly, they were behind her. They embraced her tightly and she screamed, her image flickering. In a surge of energy, still screaming, Constance and the two children melt into a puddle in the floor.**

**Sam and Dean shoved the bureau over and go to look curiously at the spot where the spirits vanished.**

**"So this is where she drowned her kids." Dean confirmed with an odd look on his face. Sam nodded.**

"Oh god.. I  _do_  become that guy who points out everything obvious." Dean moaned, throwing his head back in an exaggerated motion.

**"That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them." he explained.**

**"You found her weak spot. Nice work Sammy." Dean complemented, pride in his voice. He slapped Sam on the chest, where he'd been burned, and walked away. Sam laughed harshly through the pain.**

**"Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you." He pointed out. "What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak." He teased.**

**"Hey," Dean objected, chuckling. "Saved your ass." He leaned over to look at the car. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car.." he threatened, trailing off and turning to look at Sam. "I'll kill you."**

**Sam laughed.**

**The Impala tore down the road, right headlight out. Inside, Sam had his father's journal open to the 'DEAN 35-111 page and was finding coordinates on a ruler, a flashlight tucked between his chin and shoulder.**

**"Okay, here's where Dad went. It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado." He traced his finger along the map.**

Sam was kinda proud of himself. He'd just now been taught to read maps, and they were short five minute lessons from Dean sometimes. He'd never been very good at it, and it often took too long and Dean and his dad often got impatient waiting for him to figure something out. It made him feel a little bit better to know that, at least in the future, he'd get better at it, and had also learned to find coordinates.

**Dean nodded. "Sounds charming. How far?"**

**Sam thought for a moment before answering. "About six hundred miles."**

**The older brother shrugged, considering. "Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning." Sam looked at him, hesitating for a moment.**

**"Dean, I, uhm.."**

**Dean sighed, glancing to the road and back. "You're not going." He said it like he already knew it, as a statement and not a question.**

**"The interviews in like, ten hours. I gotta be there." Sam explained, imploring his brother to understand. Dean just nodded, disappointment clear in his features, attention returning to the road.**

**"Yeah, yeah whatever." he replied halfheartedly, casting a glance at his little brother. "I'll take you home."**

Dean frowned, looking down. It was hard to imagine Sammy living a separate life from him and Dad. He'd always just imagined his future as him, Sam, Dad, and the Impala. It was hard for him to stomach the fact that Sammy apparently wouldn't be apart of that future. He was proud of Sam for getting into college and all, he was, but he didn't like the idea of being away from him. It was always Sam and Dean or Dean and Sam. Saying, or even thinking, one name without the other was odd, and the thought of not being with Sam was comparable to losing a limb.

Sam picked up on his brother's stress and tilted his head, scooting toward him a bit so his right side pressed against his brother's left leg. It wasn't much, Dean didn't like big displays of emotion anyway, but it seemed to be enough to remind his big brother that he was still here now, because he smiled a bit.

**Sam turned his flashlight off.**

**Back at the apartment building, Dean pulled the Impala into the front lot, still frowning. Sam got out and leaned forward to look in through the passenger window.**

**"Call me if you find him" He asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice. Dean nodded. "And maybe I can meed up with you later, huh?" The suggestion hung in the air for a moment, and even to Sam, it didn't sound like an actual possibility.**

**"Yeah, alright." Dean finally responded.**

**Sam patted the car door twice, almost fondly, before turning away. After a second, Dean leaned toward the passeneger door, one arm going over the back of the seat as he did so.**

**"Sam?" The taller Winchester turned back. "You know, we made a hell of a team back there." He pointed out.**

**"Yeah." Sam replied, like he wasn't sure what his brother expected to come out of the observation. Dean drove off without another word, and Sam watched him, a sigh that was a mix of relief and wistful.**

There was a thick pause in the room as Sam turned and walked back inside his apartment. They knew that it all supposed to be safe and whatnot now, but none of them could quite shake the feeling that there was more coming.

**He let himself in his apartment, where everything was dark and completely silent. "Jess?" He called out, shutting the door behind him. "You home?" He noticed a plate a cookies on the table, along with a note that read, _"Missed you! Love you!"_  He smiled, picking one up and eating it as he snuck into their bedroom.**

John almost smiled. Despite the odds, it seemed that his youngest son had managed to find a life of simple domesticity, one that reminded him of himself and Mary before her death. He seemed happy, almost deliriously so.

Bobby couldn't help but think back to his wife, with a pang of sadness, as he saw Sam return home to his own girl. He couldn't help but feel proud. Sam had gotten out, had a life, had a girl who loved him waiting for him at home. He got the life that no hunter ever did.

The pride of both men was short-lived.

**The shower audibly running, he sat on he and Jess' bed, shutting his eyes and flopping down on his back. A few silent seconds later, and a dime of red appeared on his forehead.**

"No.." John breathed, realizing what was about to happen.

"Oh my god.." Dean choked.

**And then another. He flinched and opened his eyes. He gasped in horror, eyes filled with stomach wrenching terror. Jess was pinned to the ceiling, staring down at him and bleeding from the belly.**

**"NO!" He cried out in an agonized voice, as Jess burst into flame, fire spreading across the ceiling. And for a moment, Sam looked just like John, terrified into not moving.**

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

John felt like he was about to throw up, because it was  _Sam's_  eyes he saw filled with fear and panic.

**Dean burst open the front door, calling for his brother and running into the apartment.**

**Sam raised an arm, shielding his face from the god-awful heat. "Jess!" he yelled over the roar of the flames.**

**Dean got to the bedroom. "Sam!" He screamed for his brother, before looking up and seeing Jess.**

**"No! No!" Sam pleaded for it to all be in his head, imaginary. Before he realized it, his brother grabbed him and bodily dragged him from the room. He fought**   **back the entire way, only wanting to get back and save Jess.**

**"Jess! Jess! No!" He cried as flames engulfed the apartment.**

**After the fire, it was almost exactly as Dean remembered it being as a child. A fire truck was parked outside the building, fireman and police keeping back gawkers. He looked on for a moment, before walking back to his car. Sam was standing behind the open trunk, loading a shotgun with learned expertise. Dean looked in the drunk, then back to his brother, whose face was set in a desperate sort of anger, much how he remembered his father's being. Sam looked up, sighed, nodded, and tossed the shotgun back into the car.**

**"We got work to do." He growled, voice hollow with a dangerous edge. The ambulance lights lit up his face, an echo of his father's.**

**He slammed the trunk.**

The silence was deafening.

John stared, seeing in his son what he saw when he looked in the mirror, and that was terrifying. He'd held out hope for Sammy, and apparently it'd all been in vain, because whatever this thing was that'd destroyed their family, wasn't going to let any of them have any type of happiness. They were in this for good, there was no doubting that now.

Bobby stared at the then black screen for several seconds. He was angry at himself for even thinking that it was possible for a hunter to escape the life. Of course there could be no reprieve, for any hunter, especially the Winchesters.

Dean shuddered a little bit, because damn it all if Sam didn't look and sound just like their father. And so, he couldn't help but think, the cycle continues.

Sam just trembled.


	5. Wendigo - Part 1

The following day had been a particularly odd one for the Winchesters and Bobby, mainly because absolutely  _nothing_ happened.

Morning had found the disc gone, mysteriously vanished from the DVD player. They'd scoured the whole motel room and all their belongings, and yet it was nowhere to be found. Nobody would admit it, but they all thought that one of the others had taken and destroyed it. Sam thought it'd been Dad, John thought it had been Bobby, Bobby thought it'd been John, and Dean thought it'd been Sam.

Dean was worried about Sammy - which really was nothing new, he was  _always_ worried about his little brother - who had barely spoken two words since watching the disc the night before. He was also angry at his father and Bobby, who seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that Sam was going through some sort of crisis.

The two older hunters had spent most of the past twelve hours sitting in the corner of the hotel room, poring over lore books and discussing in hushed voices - like Sam and Dean couldn't hear them - whether or not that had been the actual future, and whether or not they should try to stop it. They even went back over all the information they had on the thing that killed Mary, though it was little, as if there was some answer to be found there that could spare Sam's future girlfriend's life.

Dean spent the day mostly just sitting on the bed, tuning out crappy TV and eventually the local news that none of them were actually paying attention to in the least.

Sam just buried his face in a Biology textbook, saying he had homework that he was supposed to do.

It wasn't until almost nine thirty that anything actually happened.

Bobby had stood up to leave, planning on seeking out some more books on fire spirits and the like, when John took back his journal from the opposite side of the table. Underneath it, was a paper envelope - the exact same as the disc had come in the previous night. Cautiously, he reached for it, and sure enough, within the sleeve was another disc, also unmarked. The journal had been lifted and moved several times over the course of the day, they would've noticed if it'd been there.

All four of them looked around the room again, and it was only after checking that the salt lines on the windows and under the welcome mat were all in place and having a thirty minute discussion on what could pass salt lines or had the ability to teleport or become invisible that anybody even suggested watching the new disc.

John wanted to send Sam and Dean out of the room while he and Bobby watched it, but Sam was having none of that.

"If it's like the last one, then it's about  _our lives._ We have a right to know." Sam argued in what was the longest string of words he'd used all day.

Dean was surprised, he'd never seen Sam so blatantly argue back against their father. Even when Sam was in disagreement with an order from Dad, he usually still obeyed and would confide his opposing opinion to his brother later.

"It might vanish after you watch it once, like the last one did." Dean pointed out to his father, voice lighter in an attempt to placate his father, who seemed furious at the outright disrespect from his youngest son. "It might be our only chance to see it."

The oldest Winchester was still angry, reasonably in Dean's eyes and unfairly so in Sam's, but permitted the boys to watch the DVD that he put in the player.

Sam sat crosslegged on the floor, looking nervous. Dean attempted to look casual, legs dangling off the edge of the bed as he situated himself. John returned to the chairs in the corner with Bobby after placing the disc in the player.

**"BLACKWATER RIDGE - LOST CREEK, COLORADO" Appeared on the screen in white lettering over a dark background, before shifting to the beginning of the story.**

**It was night, and two tents were set up near a ring of fire that glowed in the darkness. Crickets chirped, and inside one tent, two young men were playing head-to-head handheld video games.**

**"Dude, you're cheating." A man in the back of the tent accused.**

**"No, you just suck," his counterpart replied.**

**Outside the tent, something growled, a deep and rumbling sound.**

"That doesn't sound good." Bobby commented. He may not have been an expert on animal noises, but the older hunter would have bet his last dime that whatever had just made that noise, was most certainly not a bear.

**In the other tent, a third young man was recording a video message on his cell phone.**

**"Hey Haley, day six, we're still out near Blackwater Ridge." He reported with a grin. Something dark flicked behind the tent, unknown to the him, and too fast to be identifiable as much more than 'something dark'. "We're fine, keeping safe, so don't worry, okay? Talk to you tomorrow." He stopped the video, turning the screen back towards himself and sending the message.**

**Back in the first tent, the man who'd accused his friend of cheating closed the game system and tossed it aside. He stood and began unzipping the tent, which got his friends attention.**

**"Hey, where ya goin'?" he asked, looking almost offended. "My moment of victory."**

**"Nature calls." He replied, stepping outside and zipping the tent back up behind him. He went to stand against a tree to relieve himself. Behind him, the fire flickered, and off the side, something snapped a stick. He looked toward the sound, eyes widening, and saw the trees rustling slightly.**

"That would be you cue to cue to get the hell out." Dean practically groaned at the television. It truly astounded him how stupid people could be. "Even if you think it's an animal you should leave, not stand there using your junk as bait!"

Now, he might've been imagining it, but he could've sworn that when he looked down, Sam had smiled just a little bit.

**He shook his head and returned his attention downward, before looking back up sharply a second later. Something growled.**

**Inside the second tent, the man who'd been recording the video was reading a book, until he heard screaming from outside. In the first tent, the remaining man heard the same and rolled over.**

"See? Should've run while you had the chance."

**"Gary, what's goin' on?" The third man called over to the other tent, sitting up as he did so.**

**The other man, Gary, opened the tent and stuck his head out to look around. He didn't see anything, but most definitely heard the low, rumbling growl from before. Slowly, and with wide eyes, he looked up. Something yanked him out of the tent as he screamed.**

**The remaining camper turned out the lantern he'd had on as shadows flicked rapidly around the outside of his tent. He looked around, eyes attempting to follow the shadows and snarls, before it went eerily silent.**

**Claws ripped open the side of the tent, and the man screamed in terror.**

"Balls!" Bobby muttered, clearly not very much liking having to watch people's implied deaths. In truth, they were all grateful that they weren't being outright shown what was happening to the people.

**"PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA"**

**Birds chirped, it was bright outside and the weather was nice. It could've been a happy scene, if the setting wasn't a cemetery. Sam wore a suit and tie, carrying a bouquet of various flowers - notably excluding roses. He walked through the otherwise deserted cemetery, devastation plain on his face.**

The feeling in the room, which had actually partially lightened after Bobby's exclamation of 'balls', was instantly reclaimed by the darker atmosphere it'd held earlier. It was like there was weights on the air itself.

Dean swallowed harshly at the scene, trying to remember if Dad had ever actually gone to their mother's grave other than the funeral itself. He didn't think so. He had no recollection of a graveyard, or a stone with his mother's name on it - not that there'd been anything to bury, as sure was the case with Jess.

To say that John found it difficult to watch his Sam like that would be an extreme understatement. It was almost physically impossible for him to watch his son be that much of a complete, emotional wreck.

**He sighed and stopped next to a gravestone, looking down at it. There was a small picture of a grinning Jess set into the stone above her name, a black and white picture of her leaning against the stone between a white teddy bear and a wooden box with a crucifix leaning on the picture, a small American flag next to the box, and three candles standing on the gravestone. The stone itself read: "Jessica Lee Moore, Beloved Daughter, January 24th 1984 - November 2nd, 2005."**

"Oh.." Dean breathed, noting the dates on the gravestone. "She had the same birthday as me." He shifted a little bit and sighed. "And she died the same day as mom." He winced upon mentioning his mother, the details of her death so incredibly fresh in his mind and in those of his father, brother, and Bobby.

**Sam looked between the gravestone and the flowers, before speaking. "I uh.." He broke off and laughed weakly. "You always said roses were- were lame, so i brought you, uh..." He trailed off, expression pained as he looked back to the picture set into the gravestone, then away, choking back tears. He stepped toward the gravestone, kneeling to set down the flowers.**

**"Jess... oh God.." he breathed, voice trembling as he shook his head. "I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth."**

It was there that Dean felt his heart break in two for his little brother. He looked over at Sam, whose shoulders had slumped and who was watching with sad, upturned eyes. He wanted to lower himself to the floor, wrap his arms around Sammy and promise that they'd find out a way to make sure that nothing like that ever happened, that they'd kill the damn thing before it could ever hurt anybody else again - but he didn't.

John listened to his son talk to Jess' grave and felt a particularly sharp spike of sorrow. He knew exactly what that felt like, he still thought about it every now and again. The fact that he should've been able to protect Mary from whatever the thing was and he should've done something. The line of thinking mixed with the sheer inability to change the past could be enough to push a person over the edge, he himself had almost gone over the deep end. Watching Sam tiptoe that line was debilitating.

**He tried to blink back the tears, though they still shone in his eyes. He leaned the flowers against the crucifix at the base of the grave, when an arm covered in dirt shot out of the ground and grabbed him by the wrist.**

The entire room, jumped, startled.

"What the hell was that?!" Dean demanded. His skin was warm. He was supposed to be a hunter, or at least one in training. He shouldn't have jumped like that. He did feel slightly better when he saw that even his father and Bobby had done the same.

"A nightmare." John answered knowingly.

**Sam jerked awake with a gasp. He was riding shotgun next to Dean in the Impala, "Hot-Blooded" playing through the speakers, and the cemetery visit days behind them, if he ever even went. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, pulling himself fully from sleep. Dean looked over, concerned.**

**"You okay?" He asked. Sam just glanced at him for a moment before quickly looking away.**

**"Yeah, I'm fine."**

John's frown deepened. He knew well the mechanical 'I'm fine.' that came after being asked repeatedly when it was blatantly obvious that you weren't. It was, perhaps, one of the biggest lies he'd ever told himself, and knew that the same was quickly becoming true for Sammy.

**"Another nightmare?" He didn't get an answer, Sam just looked away and cleared his throat. He didn't need to tell him, really, Dean knew his little brother - and that had most definitely been a nightmare. "You wanna drive for awhile?" he asked, an attempt to cheer Sammy up just a little bit.**

**Sam just laughed, looking at his brother with tired disbelief. "Dean, your whole life you never once asked me that."**

"You're probably like one of those old lady drivers who drive like twenty miles under the speed limit." Dean tried, looking down at Sam, who just rolled his eyes and returned his gaze to the TV.

**"Just thought you might want to. Nevermind."**

**"Look man, you're worried about me, I get it. And thank you, but I'm perfectly okay." Sam tried to assure his brother, but his tone was less than convincing. It was clear Dean didn't believe him, and he hummed a sarcastic agreeance. Sam reached and grabbed a map roughly. "Alright, where are we?" he asked, not looking up.**

**"We are.." Dean thought for a moment. "just outside of Grand Junction."**

**The younger Winchester folded down the map, which was of Colorado, and had a large, red, X labelled 35-111. "You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon." he thought aloud. Dean frowned.**

Bobby wasn't at all surprised to learn that they'd launched their own investigation on the thing, nor was he at all shocked to find that they'd come out of it without answers. He supposed that that must be the hardest part for the Winchesters. At least for him, in killing his wife he killed the demon that possessed her. He knew the damn thing was dead. John, Dean, and Sam could have no such small satisfaction.

**"Sam, we dug around there for a week. We came up with nothing. If you wanna find the thing that killed Jessica-"**

**"We gotta find Dad first." Sam interrupted, already knowing what his brother would say.**

**Dean nodded. "Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty years, it's no coincidence" He concluded. "Dad will have answers. He'll know what to do." Sam just shook his head and changed the subject.**

**"It's weird, man, these coordinates he left us." He looked closer at the map. "This Blackwater Ridge."**

"Well that was abrupt." Dean muttered, though he could understand.

**"What about it?"**

**"There's nothing there. It's just woods." He explained, putting the map back down. "Why is he sending us to the middle of nowhere?" He asked as they drove past a National Forest sign that says, "Welcome to LOST CREEK COLORADO National Forest."**

**Later, the Impala was parked next to the sign that designated the building nearby as the ranger station for Lost Creek Trail.**

**"So Blackwater Ridge is pretty remote." Sam commented, looking a 3D map of the national forest, paying particular attention to the ridge labeled BLACKWATER. Dean, meanwhile, was looking around at the decorations. "It's cut off by these canyons here, rough terrain, dense forest, abandoned silver and gold mines all over the place."**

**"Dude, check out the size of this freaking bear."**

"Really?" Sam asked, drawing eyes from all over the room. It was the first time he'd commented on his disc, and his tone had been lighter than it'd been since they watched Jess' death.

**Sam turned to look, seeing Dean staring at a framed photo of a man standing behind a much larger bear. He moved to stand next to his brother.**

"Whoa.. that  _is_ a big bear." Dean realized, looking at the screen with curiosity. "I mean.. the thing's huge!"

Sam looked at his older brother and rolled his eyes, for a second, noticing that it didn't seem like Dean had changed very much in ten years.

**"And a dozen or more grizzlies in the area. It's no nature hike, that's for sure."**

**"You boys aren't planning on going out near Blackwater Ridge by any chance?" A forest ranger asked from behind them. Sam and Dean whirled around, started at the sudden sound of his voice.**

**"Oh, no, sir, we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder, just working on a paper." Sam explained easily, like he'd practiced the story beforehand. He chuckled lightly and Dean raised a fist.**

"It's CU Boulder." John corrected, realizing his son's mistake. Surely a local such as the ranger would realize that.

**"Recycle, man." He added.**

**The ranger wasn't at all fooled. He stared them straight on before simply stating: "Bull." Sam's eyes flicked to his brother, who didn't move. "You're friends with that Haley girl, right?" The ranger asked.**

**Dean considered for a moment before answering. "Yes. Yes, we are, Ranger-" he checked the nametag the officer wore, "Wilkinson."**

**"Well I will tell you exactly what we told her. Her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't be back from Blackwater until the twenty-fourth, so it's not exactly a missing persons now, is it?" Dean shook his head. "You can tell that girl to quit worrying, I'm sure her brother's just fine."**

Dean felt a rush of distaste towards the ranger. Clearly, he decided, the man didn't have any siblings or close family. He knew, better than anybody that you just  _know_ when your family's in danger. His dislike of the man was made considerably worse knowing that the sister was right, and that the boy was really in trouble, if not dead.

**"We will." Dean confirmed with a nod. "Well that Haley girl's quite a pistol, huh?" he asked, trying to subtly dig for information.**

**"That's putting it mildly." The ranger confirmed.**

**"Actually.." Dean said after a moment of thought. "You know, what would help is if I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit. You know, so she could see her brother's return date."**

**The ranger eyed Dean, who who arched his own eyebrows in response.**

**As they walked out of the station, Dean had a piece of paper in his hand and was laughing. Sam was unamused.**

**"What, are you cruising for a hookup or something?" He asked.**

Dean looked seriously offended. "Hey, it's a case. I'm not  _that_ much of an ass!" He protested, frowning at the screen and looking for all the world like the eight year old who just got told that his shirt was stupid.

"You  _are_  kinda a whore." Sam muttered, barely audible, though he sounded like he was teasing.

"You better watch your mouth Sammy." Dean admonished, only halfway serious. They really couldn't be expected to not cuss or say words they probably shouldn't, seeing how their father was fond of certain words, and they all knew Bobby wasn't one to shy away from cursing. He was also pretty sure that Sammy had learned the word from  _him,_ so there was that too.

**"What do you mean?" Dean asked, looking genuinely confused.**

**"The coordinates point to Blackwater Ridge, so what are we waiting for? Let's just go find Dad. I mean, why even talk to this girl?" He asked, frustration obvious in his tone as he neared and stopped on either side of the Impala.**

"Ooh.. all fiesty, are we?" Dean teased lightly.

**"I don't know, maybe we should know what we're walking into before we actually walk into it?" Dean suggested in answer.**

**There was a long pause, that Sam finally broke with an aggravated, "What?"**

**"Well since when are you all shoot first ask questions later?" he asked.**

Dean wanted to smack his future self. Was he really that oblivious? He really, really hoped not. Why the hell did he think Sam wanted to find Dad so bad? Had he not just told him they wouldn't be able to kill the thing that killed Mom and Jess until they found him?

**Sam shot him a look that carried an air of, 'Why the hell do you think?', but instead he met his brother's gaze. "Since now." He turned away, getting into the car. Dean looked vaguely entertained as he got in his side.**

**At the Collins house, Sam and Dean stood at the door to a house, which opened to reveal a young woman. Dean smiled.**

**"You must be Haley Collins. I'm Dean, this is Sam. We're, ah, we're rangers with the Park Service. Ranger Wilkinson sent us over. He wanted us to ask a few questions about your brother Tommy." he explained, making his voice professional. The girl hesitated though.**

**"Lemme see some ID." She requested.**

"Smart girl." John noted, watching. Nobody ever really asked to see ID, they usually just kind of went with it and answered the question, which could be a problem if the people showing up and claiming to be authority weren't people trying to help.

**Dean pulled out a fake ID with the name Samuel Cole on it and held it up against the screen. Haley looked at it, then at Dean, who grinned, before pushing the door open. "Come on in."**

**"Thanks." Dean said as the door swung open. Haley apparently caught sight of the Impala and nodded toward it.**

**"That yours?" She asked.**

**The older Winchester nodded. "Yeah." Sam glanced back at the car, trying, at least, to appear interested.**

**"Nice car." She turned to lead Dean and Sam into the kitchen. There, Sam spoke up.**

"Hell yeah it's a nice car!" Dean agreed enthusiastically. He loved the Impala, the Impala was home, forget the hotel rooms and apartments.

**"So if Tommy's not due back for a while, how do you know something's wrong?" he asked, as Haley came back in the room with a bowl that she placed on the table.**

**"He checks in every day by cell. he emails, photos, stupid little videos- we haven't heard anything in over three days now." She explained.**

**"Well, maybe he can't get cell reception." Sam offered, seeking the non-supernatural explanation for the girl's brother to not have checked in.**

**"He's got a satellite phone, too." She explained.**

**"Could it be he's just having fun and forgot to check in?" Dean asked.**

**"He wouldn't do that." The answer didn't come from Haley, but from the teenager who sat a few feet away at the table. Dean glanced at the kid, who looked away.**

Sam could understand the way the kid had reacted, abrupt. He and Dean knew what each other would and wouldn't do, they they always had. To him, it wasn't at all odd for the boy to have answered with such complete and utter certainty.

**Haley put some more food on the table. "Our parents are gone. It's just my two brothers and me. We all keep pretty close tabs on each other." She elaborated, seeing the confused look on the boys' faces.**

**"Can I see the pictures he sent you?" Sam asked.**

**"Yeah," She replied. On a laptop, Haley pulled up the pictures. "That's Tommy." She clicked twice and another picture came up, then the still frame opening of the latest video.**

**"Hey Haley, day six, we're still out near Blackwater Ridge. We're fine, keeping safe, so don't worry okay? Talk to you tomorrow."**

**Sam's head tilted as he saw something, though wasn't sure what. Dean didn't seem to notice.**

"Did you seriously not see that?" Sam asked, turning around to look at his brother with something akin to a smirk, though it was too uneasy to even be compared to a smile.

"Apparently not." Dean mumbled, yet again annoyed at his future self.

**"Well, we'll find your brother. We're heading out to Blackwater Ridge first thing." Dean assured.**

**"Then maybe I'll see you there." She replied. "Look, I can't sit around here anymore. So I hired a guy. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm gonna find Tommy myself." Dean just watched her for a second.**

**"I think I know how you feel." he commented.**

**"Hey, do you mind forwarding these to me?" Sam asked, referring back to the videos.**

**"Sure."**

**By the time night fell, Sam and Dean sat down at a table in a bar.**

**"So, Blackwater Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic. Local campers, mostly. But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found." Sam reported, opening his father's journal.**

Sam was mildly surprised that, already, he and Dean were using their dad's Journal to hold the information that they themselves were gathering. He guessed it was convenient, but it was still an odd concept to him. It was always  _Dad's_ journal. Nobody touched it besides him unless specifically told to, and yet his future self had little to no discretion about it.

**"Any before that?" Dean asked. Sam pulled out some newspaper articles from the inside pocket to show his brother.**

**"Yeah, in 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year. Authorities said it was a grizzly attack." He elaborated, as Dean read the headline of the old article.**

"Why is it always grizzlies?" Dean asked, sounding exasperated. "Anytime anybody dies in the woods, it's always grizzlies. The person could've been stabbed and the police would say that a grizzly did it."

**Sam pulled out his laptop. "And again in 1959 and again before that in 1936." He opened his laptop, which already had a window open to Tom's video to Haley. "Every twenty-three years, just like clockwork. Okay. Watch this. Here's a clincher. I downloaded that guy Tommy's video to the laptop. Check this out." He pulled up the video and went through three frames of the video one at a time. A shadow crossed the screen behind Tom.**

**"Do it again." Dean requested, to which Sam obliged.**

**"That's three frames. That's a fraction of a second. Whatever that thing is, it can move."**

**Dean reached over and hit Sam's chest. "Told you something was going on." He commented, voice almost smug.**

"That's because I'm older and therefore always right." Dean reasoned, smirking at Sam, who looked rather annoyed with the claim, and who glared at him.

"No you aren't." He argued back.

**"Yeah." Sam conceded, closing the laptop. "I got one more thing." He handed over another newspaper article. "In 'fifty-nine one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive." Dean looked at the article with curiosity.**

**"Is there a name?"**

John couldn't help the little bit of pride that sprung up. Though he was naturally upset about the reappearance of the thing that had killed his wife, he couldn't help the feeling of slight satisfaction at the sight of Sam and Dean, his boys, out doing the job. Saving people and hunting the evil sons of bitches that hurt them.

**An old man spoke to Sam and Dean while leading them inside his house, cigarette in his mouth.**

**"Look, ranger, I don't know why you're asking me about this. It's public record. I was a kid. My parents got mauled by a-"**

**"Grizzly? That's what attacked them?" Sam interrupted. The man took a draw from his cigarette, took it out of his mouth, and nodded.**

**"The other people that went missing that year, those bear attacks too?" Dean asked. A heavy pause hung in the air. "What about all the people that went missing this year? Same thing?" Another pause.**

"Bit heavy handed, don't you think?" Bobby questioned, furrowing his eyebrows. He knew that if you pushed people the wrong way they tended to clam up and not give answers, which could lead to answers gotten too late.

**"We knew what we were dealing with, we might be able to stop it." The old man looked at him in disbelief.**

**"I seriously doubt that. Anyways, I don't see what difference it would make." He grumbled, sitting down. "You wouldn't believe me. Nobody ever did."**

**Sam sat down across from the man. "Mr. Shaw, what did you see?" he asked. Shaw hesitated.**

**"Nothing." He replied. "It moved too fast to see. It hid too well. I heard it, through. A roar. Like.. no man or animal I ever heard."**

**"It came at night?" Sam asked, and Shaw nodded. "Got inside your tent?"**

**"It got inside our cabin." He corrected. "I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It didn't smash a window or break the door. It unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that could do something like that? I didn't even wake up till I heard my parents screaming."**

**"It killed them?" The younger hunter questioned, voice careful but sure.**

Judging by the tone of Sam's voice, he had experience in this, he knew how to talk to a person without upsetting them to the point that they'd stop talking or become uncooperative. The same was true for Dean, though he was more aggressive about it.

**"Dragged them off into the night." The old man confirmed, shaking his head. "Why it left me alive... been asking myself that ever since." There was a long moment of silence, when Shaw's hand went to his own collar. "Did leave me this though." He opened his shirt to reveal three long scars. Claw marks. Sam and Dean looked at them, hidden alarm pulsing through them. "There's something evil in those woods. It was some sort of a demon."**


	6. Wendigo - Part 2

**Sam and Dean walked the length of a corridor, rooms on either side**

**"Spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. If they want inside, they just go through the walls." Dean pointed out as he came around a corner, his brother just behind him.**

**"So it's probably something else, something corporeal." Sam reasoned, looking over at Dean as he did.**

**"Corporeal?" Dean repeated, "Excuse me, professor." he teased.**

"Pretty sure you just use big words to make everyone else feel stupid Sammy." Dean teased, rolling his eyes. 

"If I know the words, why not say them?" Sam asked, sounding slightly affronted at the tease, he turned to look at his brother. 

**"Shut up." He seemed less than amused. "So what do you think?"**

**"The claws, the speed that it moves... could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog. Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature," He paused, turning toward Sam in the doorway. "And it's 'corporeal.' Which means we can kill it."**

**Back outside in the dark of night, Dean opened the trunk of the Impala, then the weapons box, propping it open with a shotgun. He started grabbing guns and stuffing them in a duffel bag, while Sam leaned over the other side.**

**"We cannot let that Haley girl go out there," he said as he helped to fill the bag with weapons. Dean didn't even look up from what he was doing as he replied.**

Sam found himself agreeing wholeheartedly with his future self. Surely they couldn't just let the girl run right off into danger?  If the thing they saw at the beginning of the disc was still out there, then it could spell big trouble for even a hunter, let alone someone who expected a grizzly at worst. 

**"Oh yeah What are we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big scary monster?"**

**"Yeah." Sam replied, finally managing to catch his brother's eye.**

"Because that'll go well. Nice thinking Sammy." Dean muttered, though there was a little bit of concern beneath the tease. Since when was it okay to just tell people the truth? Given, that may not be exactly what Sam meant, but it sure seemed like it. 

**"Her brother's missing Sam." he pointed out, "She's not gonna just sit this out. Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator friend." His voice left little room for argument - though of course Sam found it.**

**"Finding Dad's not enough?" He slammed the weapons box shut, then the trunk. "Now we gotta babysit too?" His voice hardened and took an edge to it that seemed to surprise Dean, who started. "What?" He asked, voice not changing tone.**

**"Nothing." Dean replied simply, throwing the duffel at Sam, whose lip curled for a half second before watching him walk off with a stony expression.**

Sam was surprised at himself. Even on his worst days, he couldn't imagine being so cold toward the prospect of keeping people safe. That was the whole point of what the family business was, wasn't it? He didn't like the anger he saw in his own eyes, the disregard for the girl's safety. The ice in his own voice made lead settle into the bottom of his stomach as he realized what it reminded him of. It reminded him of Dad, the way he pushed out every detail that wasn't important. 

Dean tilted his head as he watched the future Sam's expressions, ones he'd never seen on his little brother's face before now. They looked out of place, and he couldn't imagine them on Sammy's as he looked to his little brother. The edge in his voice was off too, like it didn't belong there. If anything, it belonged in their father's. That was a thought he didn't even want to consider entertaining. 

**The following day, out in the forest, a man was talking to Haley and Ben while checking a shotgun at the back of a truck, all of them carrying full backpacks.**

**"I'll tell you again, I don't think Ben should come." The man advised, seriously.**

**"Roy," Haley sighed as she walked up to him, but the man - Roy - cut her off.**

**"Look, you're paying me good money to keep everybody safe. I think Ben's safest at home."**

"You have no idea." Bobby muttered. Of course, he understood that they had no idea the danger they were walking into, they just wanted to bring their brother home, but that didn't make it any smarter in his eyes. But then again, he supposed family superseded common sense most of the time, often rightly so. 

**The Impala pulled up, earning stares from all three of them. Haley shook her head as the Winchesters climbed out to the car. Sam grabbed the duffel back from the back seat, swinging it over his shoulder as he rejoined his brother.**

**"You guys got room for two more?" Dean asked.**

**"Wait, you wanna come with us?" Haley asked, disbelief in her voice.**

**"Who are these guys?" Roy questioned from behind her.**

"I already don't like him." Dean decided suddenly. Just hearing him talk and seeing the way he carried himself, it spelled arrogant douchebag. And an arrogant douchebag would only get in the way on the hunt. Especially if he tried to pull the whole 'I'm older and therefore have more experience' card. He seemed the type. 

"Why?" Sam asked, not quite understanding. "He's barely said two words."

"Just watch. He'll put everyone in danger." Dean replied. 

He wouldn't say it out loud, but John was inclined to agree with his oldest son. Being a jerk in general didn't have much to do with a hunt, but once you add in arrogance, it got dangerous. What he also didn't say, was that while this Roy guy may be a pain in the ass, he could be helpful, especially if he had experience in the area. Experience with monsters was all well in good, but in situations like this, familiarity with locale was helpful.

**"Apparently this is all the park service could muster up for the search and rescue." She replied irritably. Meanwhile, Sam headed past everyone, walking around the truck.**

**"You're rangers?" Roy asked, a touch of disbelief in her voice.**

**"That's right." Dean replied, voice light and even.**

**"And you're hiking out in biker boots and jeans?" Haley questioned, looking him up and down. Dean glanced at his attire before looking back up and smirking.**

"I know that it's smart of her to be suspicious and all, but she's kinda being a bitch." Dean muttered. "I mean, even if she suspects we-they-whatever aren't rangers, you'd think she'd be grateful that someone wanted to help look at all, right?" He asked. He couldn't help but look at Sam. He knew if Sammy went missing, he'd probably listen and agree to whoever was willing to help him - that's just what you  _did_ when your family was in trouble. 

**"Well sweetheart, I don't do shorts." He replied, walking past her after Sam.**

**"What, you think this is funny?" Roy demanded. "It's dangerous backcountry out there. Her brother might be hurt." Sam turned back a bit and arched an eyebrow, but remained quiet as his brother answered.**

**"Believe me, I know how dangerous it can be. We just wanna help them find their brother, that's all." He continued walking, passing Sam a few feet before stopping.**

**Somewhere else, a mine shaft let in light. Tom and Gary were hanging by their wrists from the ceiling, assorted corpses with them. A low growling rumbled from somewhere, and Gary spotted a tall skinny shape and started yelling. Tommy did his best to turn away and finally closes his eyes tightly as Gary began to scream.**

Sam's eyes widened and he looked to his father and Bobby, silently seeking some sort of answer for what just happened. What had that thing been? Was there a particular reason it'd attacked Gary and not Tom? Where was the other guy? Unfortunately, there was no reply to his gaze. In fact, Bobby and his father seemed just as confused as he was. They didn't know what that thing was. He looked to Dean and the fact that his brother didn't know either had him pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He always just kind of assumed that his family knew everything to know about hunting - and if they didn't Bobby would. It was frightening for him to think about the fact that they didn't, that there were things out there that they had no idea how to fight. 

**Back in the forest, the group moved between the trees. Roy in the lead, then Dean, Haley and Ben, with Sam bringing up the rear.**

"Wait! What happened? What the hell was that?!" Dean demanded, outraged at the change of scene. Not that he necessarily wanted to hear the poor bastard screaming as he was killed, but exactly what purpose did showing them that brief glimpse of the thing serve? 

**"Roy, you said you did a little hunting." Dean stated, seemingly in an attempt to start conversation.**

**"Yeah, more than a little." Came the response.**

**"Uh-huh. What kind of furry critters do you hunt?"**

**"Mostly buck, sometimes bear."**

**Almost casually, Dean passed Roy, slipping into the lead like he hadn't really intended to.**

John arched an eyebrow as the future version of his son pressed past their guide. While he understood what he was trying to do, he wanted to smack in him in the back of his head for his stupidity. While taking the lead definitely proved a point and was a pretty big dominance gesture, the older hunter knew it would only cause tension between the two, especially seeing how Roy definitely had more experience in the area. Creating an issue this early out could come back to bite them in the ass if they needed his expertise later. 

**"Tell me, uh, Bambi or Yogi ever hunt you back?" he asked. Out of nowhere, Roy's hand shot out, grabbing Dean roughly. Sam straightened up but didn't move forward. "Whatcha doing Roy?"**

**The guide grabbed a stick and poked the ground, where a bear trap snapped around it. Haley looked annoyed.**

**"You should watch where you're stepping Ranger." he said with an arrogant little smile, dropping the stick and retaking the lead.**

**"It's a bear trap." Dean explained as if trying to stave off embarrassment.**

Sam snorted. While it was a possibility Dean could've ended up seriously hurt, he hadn't been, and seeing his face flush red was hilarious. Very rarely did he get the chance to see Dean get knocked down a peg by anyone other than their father, let alone a complete stranger, and it gave him a small feeling of playful satisfaction. 

"Think it's funny, do you Sammy?" Dean challenged, arching his eyebrows and casting a playfully predatory look on his little brother. "I'll definitely make sure and remember that." He commented, in a voice that clearly said he'd hold onto that for future reference. 

**They hiked on, until a few moments lated, Haley caught up to Dean. "You didn't pack any provisions. You guys are carrying a duffel bag. You're not rangers." She reached out and grabbed Dean's arm roughly. "So who the hell are you?"**

**Ben moved past Haley and Dean without looking back. Sam paused, looking at Dean until his brother indicated with a look that he should go on. He obeyed, and Dean watched him go for a moment.**

Dean would be lying if he said that seeing Sam follow a gesture like that hadn't surprised him. While Sam usually did what he was told, he was usually quite stubborn if he thought there might be something wrong, or if he'd already set his mind on doing something. In this case, he'd done both. Being pulled aside in dangerous forest could be bad, and he'd already stopped, meaning he'd set his mind on staying, but he'd ignored both and followed instruction based on only a look. It was surprising to him, and maybe even to his future self, as he watched Sam return to the group.

**"Sam and I are brothers, and we're looking for our father. He might be here, we don't know. I just figured that you and me, we're in the same boat." He explained. Haley glanced down for a moment before looking back at him.**

**"Why didn't you just tell me that fromt the start?" She asked.**

**"I'm telling you now. 'sides, it's probably the most honest I've ever been with a woman. ...ever." He paused for a moment. "So we okay?"**

**There was a quiet few seconds as she seemed to think it through. "Yeah, okay."**

Bobby nodded in approval. This Haley girl seemed to have some of the better instincts he'd seen in a civilian in a long time. She seemed to know who to trust and what she had to do to keep herself and her brothers safe. 

**"And what do you mean I didn't pack provisions?" he asked, disbelief in his voice, like he was offended. He pulled a big bag of peanut M &Ms from his jacket, sticking a hand in it and flashing a smile as he turned and went after the rest of the group. ** **Haley waited a moment before following.**

**Later, Sam and Dean's positions were switched, with the younger brother just behind Roy and the older taking up the end.**

**"This is it." Roy declared, pausing. "Blackwater Ridge."**

**Sam slid past Roy, much like Dean had before, and earned a disapproving look. "What coordinates are we at?" He asked.**

Sam was surprised his future self had gotten away with that. Roy seemed like he didn't like anyone being ahead of him, even if they weren't moving. He was also surprised that the future version of himself would even try it, especially seeing how Dean had almost gotten his leg caught in a bear trap just before then. 

**Roy pulled out a GPS, looking down at it for a few seconds. "Thirty-five and minus one-eleven." He reported, just as Dean moved to his brother's side. Both pairs of eyes flicked across the forest.**

**"You hear that?" Dean asked, though there wasn't any sound to be heard. Sam apparently knew that it was the lack of noise his brother was referring to, because his expression betrayed no confusion as he replied.**

**"Yeah. Not even crickets."**

"That's not good." Bobby commented knowingly. When nature got quiet, it was never a good sign. He judged by the way the boy's eyes analyzed their surroundings, they were well of that as well, which was good. He'd known plenty of hunters who'd overlooked something like that and had ended up paying dearly for the oversight. 

"No it's not." John agreed with a nod.

**"I'm gonna go take a look around." Roy announced. Sam turned to look at him for a second before returning his gaze to the forest.**

**"You shouldn't go off by yourself." He warned.**

"He shouldn't even have to be told that." Dean groaned, throwing his head back in frustration. "People are so stupid." He muttered, remembering the argument he'd posed for that when they were watching the last disc. "Even if it was just a bear, going off on your own is pretty stupid." He added, recalling the picture of the gigantic grizzly his future self had stared at in the Ranger Station.

**Smiling, Roy laughed a little. "That's sweet. Don't worry about me." He waved his gun and pushed between the brothers. Sam followed after him, while Dean turned back to the others as they caught up**

**"All right, everybody stays together. Let's go."**

**Later, Sam, Dean, Ben, and Haley were all resting near a large rock. Haley took a drink of water, before handing the bottle up to Dean, who was perched atop it. Ben spotted something and, brow furrowing, went to have a look. Seeing the boy leave, Sam followed, watching as the teenager moved a tree branch aside to have a look at what was beneath it, a Native American stick figure etched into the rock.**

**"That's a hell of a find, Ben. Those are Anasazi." He commented, recognizing the design of the figure. Dean lowered himself from the boulder and walked over as Ben looked up at Sam.**

**"What's that?"**

"Here we go.." Dean groaned, knowing that this was going to lead into a long explanation that would most likely make no sense to anybody but Sam, or at the very least would leave the vague feeling of awkwardness, like when he's pointed out the true meaning of the pentagram necklace the girl had had in Jericho.

**"Ancient Indians." He began to explain, "They were this whole civilization that just vanished completely. No one really knows why."**

"Why ya gotta be a walking encyclopedia?" Dean asked sarcastically, picking up a pen from the bedside table and throwing it at Sam. It hit the back of his head, and Sam turned to glare at Dean with that familiar little scowl that none of the Winchesters could take at all seriously - probably because the anger behind it wasn't serious.

**He tilted his head at the drawing again, leaning forward to look closer, a vague look of recognition flittering across his face. "I've seen that somewhere before.." He realized. His thoughts were interrupted by Roy's voice.**

**"Haley! Over here!"**

**They all ran toward the sound of Roy's voice, entering a clearing before coming a stop.**

**"Oh my god." Haley's eyes widened as she looked around. The tents were ripped to ribbons, spatters of crimson blood vivid against the grey. Supplies were strewn throughout the campsite.**

**"Looks like a grizzly." Roy concluded as Haley and Dean looked at the destroyed campsite.**

Dean barely bit back another 'people are stupid' comment, reminding himself that Roy didn't know better. To him, there was no other explanation than a grizzly, so that's of course what he thought it was. It wasn't necessarily his fault. All that being said, he couldn't help but to roll his eyes and snort.

**"Tommy?" Haley took off her backpack and gear, walking to the other side of the clearing. "Tommy!" She called out again as Sam moved forward to her side quickly as she called out again.**

**"Shh."**

**"Tommy!" She called out again, ignoring Sam's attempt to quiet her.**

"Don't- ugh-" Dean groaned. 

"You having an issue there?" Sam asked, poking his head up at the end of the bed, grinning at his brother's distress. It was amusing to him to see Dean reacting so strongly to this. It kind of reminded him how he'd reacted to the TV that one time Sam had caught him watching some soap opera. 

**"Shh-hh-hh!" He reiterated firmly.**

**"Why?" She asked, not looking at him. Instead, her eyes were glued on the forest, as if her brother would come walking out of them any second.**

**"Something might still be out there." He explained, eyes following her's over the eerily motionless brush.**

**"Sam!" Dean called from behind them.** **For a moment, Sam made no move to respond, but after a second turned and made his way over to his brother, snapping a stick in the process and crouching next to him.**

**"The bodies were dragged from the campsite." He started, turning to look at Sam before redirecting his focus at the ground.**

"Well that's pleasant." Sam muttered with a grimace. The thought of human beings being yanked bleeding and screaming through the forest was one he didn't want to dwell too terribly much on. 

**"But here, the tracks just vanish. That's weird." He pulled himself back to his full height, Sam doing the same. "I'll tell you what, that's no skinwalker or black dog," he concluded, turning away and making his way back to the clearing.**

**Haley picked up Tom's bloody cell phone, the sight of it bringing her to tears as she turns it over to reveal the busted open back. Dean lowered himself next to her.**

**"Hey," he tried to assure her in a calm voice. "He could still be alive." She looked at him, expression clearly stating that she didn't believe him, but neither have a chance to address it before they hear screaming.**

**"Help! Help!"**

"What the hell?" Bobby barked, louder than was probably necessary. He reached a hand up and rubbed at his beard as he watched. They'd just seen one of the men taken by the creature be eaten, and that voice didn't belong to the other guy, so who was screaming. He felt worry gnaw at his stomach the more he thought about it. He knew there were several creatures that could mimic voices to draw people into their trap. 

**Roy pushed past Sam and Dean, rifle in hand as Dean grabbed his own gun, leading the way through the brush as everyone took off after the noise with the intention of coming to the aid of the shouter, whose cries were desperate.**

**"Help! Somebody!" It cried again. Sam eventually passed Roy and broke off into the right of the guide, catching himself and skidding to a stop after jumping down off a log. They all paused in a small clearing, looking around for a source in a loose group.**

John was relieved to see that the group had kept, at least somewhat, together as they went in search of the source of the yelling. He'd felt a flash of concern as Sammy had broken away a bit, knowing there were plenty of creatures who would use that as an advantage, the separation of one from the group providing a perfect opportunity. 

**"It seemed like it was coming from around here, didn't it?" Haley asked warily, looking around. It was quiet for a long second. Sam looked upwards as he thought for a moment, before coming to a realization.**

**"Everybody back to camp." He ordered. **Jogging back to the ruined campsite, this time it was the younger Winchester in the lead, with Roy behind him and the other in tow.****

"Oh, going all take-charge, huh Sammy?" Dean teased, though he was slightly impressed with the way Sam had moved from passively following to giving orders and leading the way. If he was honest, he couldn't be overly surprised. At heart, Sam was very much like their father, which was the main reason for their many conflicts, and he knew that if he had to, Sam wouldn't have much trouble taking control of a situation - much like he seemingly had.

**They glanced around, only to find all of their supplies missing.** **"Our packs!" Haley exclaimed,**

**"So much for my GPS and my satellite phone." Roy grumbled.**

**"What the hell is going on?" Haley demanded, looking around.**

**"It's smart." Sam explained, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It wants to cut us off so we can't call for help."**

**"You mean someone," Roy corrected. "Some nutjob out there just stole all our gear."**

**Sam moved to stand close to his brother. "I need to speak with you. In private." He requested, before walking away from the clearing. Dean followed a second later, gun still in hand, looking unsure. "Okay, let me see Dad's journal." Dean handed it over, and Sam opened it, flipping through pages until he found what he needed. "Alright, check this out." He pointed to a First Nation-esque drawing of a figure - the same one that was on the rock earlier.**

**"Oh come on." Dean objected, voice doubtful. "Wendigos are in the Minnesota wood or, or northern Michigan. I've never even heard of one this far west." Sam just looked down, closing the journal.**

"Wendigo?" John mused. The word was unfamiliar, strange. He made a mental note to look more into it as soon as this disc was over. He supposed these discs, if there would be more, could be helpful, especially if the boy's found more creatures they hadn't experienced yet. While most of his time hunting had been spent learning on the fly, John had to admit that knowing in advance without having to go into books for answers really would be helpful. 

**"Think about it, Dean," he looked back to his brother, "the claws, the way it can mimic a human voice."**

**"Great." Dean said sarcastically, taking out his pistol. "Well then this is useless."**

**Sam handed their father's journal back, walking past his brother. He paused after a couple steps, before turning back and leaning over Dean's shoulder.**

**"We gotta get these people to safety."**

**Back at the campsite, Sam moved to address the group, walking through the clearing as he did so.**

**"Alright, listen up. It's time to go. Thing's have gotten... more complicated." His voice was tired, but sure.**

John blinked, surprised. He'd thought, if anything, it would've been Dean who took control of the situation and started giving orders, not Sam, especially with the added complication of Roy. He recognized the hint of command in his youngest's voice, and was more proud to hear that it mimicked his own than he'd rather admit. 

**There were, of course, objections.**

**"What?" Haley asked, frustrated.**

**"Kid, don't worry." Roy interjected. "Whatever's out there, I think I can handle it." For once, he didn't seem to be trying to be arrogant.**

**"It's not me I'm worried about." Sam replied, turning to look at the older man. "If you shoot this thing, you're just gonna make it mad." He glanced back toward the trail. "We have to leave. Now."**

Dean couldn't help the small smile that played at his lips. The surety in Sam's voice was encouraging. Recently he'd noticed a lot of his little brother's small insecurities, but there, for a moment he seemed to be in his element. He felt a small rush of anticipation, all of the sudden too eager to get Sammy out on his first hunt. He knew Dad wouldn't allow it until he was at least fourteen, he hadn't let Dean tag along until then - even though he'd been well aware of the truth for years before hand. He liked seeing some form of confidence in his little brother.

**"One, you're talking nonsense." Roy started. Dean arched an eyebrow, but stayed quiet, while Haley and Ben watched on. "Two, you're in no position to give anybody orders." His voice slipped into anger.**

**"Relax." Dean warned, though whether it was directed at Sam or Roy was unclear, seeing how Sam's jaw clenched as he spoke again.**

**"We never should have let you come out here in the first place, all right? I'm trying to protect you."**

**_"You_ protect _me?_ I was hunting these woods when your mommy was still kissing you good night." Roy growled, stepping directly into Sam's space.**

"Uh oh." Dean breathed, hand reaching up to he could rub his forehead with his forefinger and thumb. He was waiting for Sam to throw a punch, knock the guy right on his ass like he rightly deserved. He was pretty sure if Sam didn't, he probably would in his brother's defense. 

"I'd say 'uh oh' would be right." Bobby commented, watching with rapt attention, curious as to how the youngest Winchester would react to the challenge Roy was setting up by stepping forward - too close. He was actually kinda surprised Sam hadn't reacted yet, almost any other hunter would've upon _'You_ protect _me?'_

Sam watched carefully. Unlike his brother and Bobby, he was cheering himself on to  _not_ hit the guy. They were supposed to be helping the people, not beating them up. Also, getting cooperation from any of any of them could become nigh impossible if he hurt the guide. 

**"Yeah?" His voice lowered dangerously. "It's a damn near perfect hunter." He kept talking even as Roy looked away, antagonizing little smile playing at his lips when he looked back. "It's smarter than you, and it's going to hunt you down and eat you alive unless we get your stupid sorry ass out of here."**

"Is he actually _antagonizing_ the sum'bitch?" Bobby asked in disbelief. 

Sam blinked. What was he doing? He didn't  _start_ fights, he actively  _avoided_ them! Again, he found himself wondering what had happened to change him so much. The realization hit him like a wall - Jessica. 

Dean looked to his father in confusion. That was the opposite of Sam's personality. He never went  _looking_ for a fight, even though Dean knew he could damn well finish one. But to egg someone on in hopes of a fight was never something Sammy did, yet apparently would do. 

John swallowed roughly. He knew damn well what Sam was doing. He felt the urge to do it himself after Mary died - to go looking for every fight he could, just because he could and because he had absolutely nothing to lose. It most definitely would've led to plenty of fights and lawsuits if he hadn't had his sons to look out for. There was no doubt in his mind that that was what was going on, because Sam didn't have anyone who depended on him to keep his head. 

**Roy laughed, pushing Sam. "You know you're crazy right?" He jeered, still grinning like a madman.**

**"Yeah?" Sam challenged, voice raising as he leaned forward, "You ever hunt a wen—" Before he could finish, Dean pushed his brother out of the way, stepping in between Sam and Roy as Haley grabbed ahold of Roy's arm, barking his name.**

"Never thought I'd ever have to keep Sammy off a guy.." Dean muttered, though his voice was only partially playful. He truly wasn't too comfortable with seeing aggression affiliated with Sam. It just felt wrong. 

"You haven't had to - yet." Sam replied, though the shock was audible in his voice. 

**"Chill out." he ordered. Sam jacked his jaw and looked away, but otherwise didn't respond. Haley meanwhile, decided to attempt taking charge, earning her looks from the entire group.**

**"Stop. Stop it. Everybody just stop. Look. Tommy might still be alive. And I'm not leaving here without him."**

**There was a long pause in which the Winchesters shared a look, before Dean broke the silence.** **"It's getting late. This thing is a good hunter in the day, but an unbelievable hunter at night." He pointedly ignored the way Roy rolled his eyes. "We'll never beat it, not in the dark. We need to settle in and protect ourselves."**

John couldn't help but feel like that was a little bit backwards. If he had to picture it, he'd have imagined Dean getting into the argument and Sam being the calmer voice of reason afterwards - that's just how his boys were. Dean had always been more outwardly aggressive, and Sam more willing to remain calm. Seeing that reversed was a bit disconcerting, even if he understood why.

**"How?" Haley asked as he walked past her.**

**Come night, on the edge of the clearing, Dean drew something in the dirt with a stick. He stood and returned to the clearing, where the group had built a campfire. While Haley poked at the fire, he knelt to the ground and began another symbol by the blaze.**

**"One more time, that's—" she started, though Dean cut her off, obviously having had answered several times before.**

**"Anasazi symbols. It's for protection. The wendigo can't cross over them." Roy laughed in response, gun over his shoulder, and Dean just rolled his eyes. "Nobody likes a skeptic Roy." He tossed the stick into the fire and walked over to sit next to Sam, who rested at the very edge of the clearing.**

**"You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?" he asked, looking over at his brother.**

**"Dean—" He started, not looking over.**

**"No, you're not fine." Dean interrupted before the words could even get out.**

John nodded once in approval. There was a lot he could criticize his son for, but knowing his little brother was most definitely not on that list. He was glad that, at least at some point, Dean realized Sam wasn't as okay as the face he was putting up. He himself had cut everyone out - he had nobody to look him dead in the eye and say 'no you are not okay,' and while that was of his own doing, he was relieved to know that Sam had the option of letting himself be cared for.

**"You're like a powder keg, man. It's not like you. I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember?" he teased, though the concern in his voice was very real. Sam didn't reply for a couple seconds.**

**"Dad's not here." He finally said. "I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would have left us a message, a sign." His voice was dejected, tired.**

Not for the first time, John wondered where his future self was, and why he'd left his boys to guess where he was - armed with nothing but some coordinates and his journal. But hearing Sam's voice, so confused and unsure - he kind of hated his future self. Though he was sure there were good reasons for his departure, actually seeing the repercussions of his disappearance made him wonder if any reason would be good enough.

**"Yeah, you're probably right." Dean conceded. "Tell you the truth, I don't think Dad's ever been to Lost Creek."**

**"Then let's get these people back to town and let's hit the road." Sam suggested, "Go find Dad." His voice shifted the slightest bit, becoming a little more eager. "I mean, why are we still even here?" His tone shifted to frustration as he threw a stick toward the ground. Dean stood, moving to sit across from Sam rather than next to him, holding up their father's journal.**

**"This is why." He answered. "This book. This is Dad's single most valuable possession—everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business."**

**Sam shook his head. "That makes no sense." He argued, running his hands over his face and taking a deep breath. "Why doesn't he just- call us? Why doesn't he- tell us what he wants? Tell us where he is?"**

**"I dunno." Dean finally answered. "But the way I see it, Dad's given us a job to do, and I intend to do it."**

Bobby had easily seen that coming. Dean was loyal - he obeyed what his father told him regardless of circumstances. He wasn't the least bit surprised to know that Dean would be fine postponing the search for John if it meant following an order. He also wasn't shocked to know that that was exactly the opposite of what Sam wanted, needed really. 

**"Dean.." Sam looked down for a second before returning his gaze to his brother. "No. I gotta find Dad." His voice was quiet, thick. "I gotta find Jessica's killer." he looked back down, "It's the only thing I can think about."**

John raised a hand to his mouth, rubbing the stubble on his cheeks with his palm for a second or two. It hurt, it really did, hearing the pain in his son's voice, even if hearing Dean's faith in him was slightly uplifting and his loyalty was the slightest bit warming. He hated how much he could understand Sam - not because he didn't want a connection to his son, but because the connection was borne of an agony he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. 

**"Okay, all right, Sam, we'll find them, I promise." He leaned forward a bit, forcing his brother's focus to be on him. "Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger," He pushed Sam's arm roughly, causing the younger man's jaw to clench. "You can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gotta have patience, man."**

**Sam looked down, shaking his head back and forth gently. "How do you do it?" He asked, before a breathy laugh broke free. "How does _Dad_ do it?"**

That small laugh twisted in Dean's stomach painfully. It was  _wrong._ Just an echo of Sam's real laugh that left a painful ache in his chest. He looked back at his father, who looked like he was trying very hard to keep his emotions in check. Then he looked at Sam, whose knees were curled up into his chest, cheek on the top of them and head turned sideways. He couldn't see Sammy's face, but the uneven stutter of his breath told Dean that he was afraid but trying very hard not to show it. 

**Dean looked over to the civilians by the fire, then back to Sam. "Well for one, them." He watched his brothers eyes trace to the fire, before continuing. "I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable." He didn't say anything for a moment. "I'll tell you what else helps." He caught Sam's eye again. "Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can."**

**To that, Sam smiled just a little.**

A wave of relief hit John harder than he'd expected. He wasn't stupid, he knew Sam was far from okay - and would be for a long time - but he also knew that Dean wouldn't let him slip. He hadn't expected him to of course, but seeing it made it all just a little bit more bearable.

**A twig snapped somewhere outside of camp, and then they heard screaming.**

**"Help me! Please!"**


	7. Wendigo - Part 3

**Dean and Sam stood in unison, the younger's hand on a flashlight, the older's on his pistol as they rejoined the others in the center of the campsite, moving nearer to the fire. The creature cried out again, desperate screams with no discernable source.**

**"He's trying to draw us out." Dean informed them all in a steady voice. "Just stay cool, stay put."**

**"Inside the magic circle?" Roy jabbed, though he kept both hands on his rifle and his eyes remained fixed on the forest around them.**

Dean found himself glaring at the screen at the man. Had it been a regular movie or show, then he'd be rooting for the guy to die because seriously, he was being a huge dick - and the fact that he was  _wrong_ made his bitter sarcasm even more cringeworthy. He almost wished Sam had taken his opportunity and punched him right in the nose. 

**"Help! Help me!" The screams continued, though this time they were followed by a low growling and a loud scream. Roy pointed his gun toward the sound, seeming to realize the gravity of situation for the very first time.**

**"Okay, that's no grizzly." he realized.**

"Give the man a prize." Bobby muttered, clearly sharing the annoyance Dean held for the man. Most of the time, Bobby was one of the more understanding hunters when it came to civilians who had no idea what really went bump in the night, but Roy's personality really made it hard to be sympathetic. 

"Can you blame him though?" Sam piped up, looking to Bobby with a tilted head. "He doesn't know any better." He defended the man like one would a child that had unknowingly done something bad at school. "For all he knows it's some kind of animal." 

To that, Dean rolled his eyes and snorted. Of  _course_ Sam would defend him. The kid was a total bleeding heart. 

**Sam and Dean kept their defensive stances, while behind them Haley took her brother's hand and lowered them both to the ground against a tree behind the three men.**

**"It's okay. You'll be alright, I promise." She assured him, only to shriek a second later as something rushed past the clearing with a snarl.**

**"It's here." Sam's voice was low, tense, but there was no fear to be found there.** **Twice, Roy shot his rifle into the darkness - the second one answered with a feral sort of shrieking roar.**

"Oh come on!" Dean looked scandalized. "Did he not hear the whole, 'if you shoot it you'll only piss it off' speech!?" He crossed his arms over his chest, fighting hard to not go into a fully fledged rant. He ignored the amused look he got from Sam at his reaction, as well as the raised eyebrow he got from his father, as shocking as _that_ was. 

**"I hit it!" He announced loudly, before rushing into the brush, eager to see exactly what it was he hit.**

"Dumbass." 

"Okay, seriously Dean? Shut up." Sam muttered, amusement fading as his brother's irritated outbursts. The first few times it was funny, seeing Dean get all worked up and angry about it - but it got to be kind of annoying the longer it went on. 

"Ooh. Feisty Sammy." Dean teased, grinning. 

**"Roy, no!" Dean called, "Roy!" He didn't dare to follow at first, stopping his pursuit at the symbols in the dirt. He turned back to Haley and Ben, who then had a torch in hand. "Don't move!" He commanded, before running off into the darkness, Sam just behind him.**

"Don't go runnin' after him, ya idjits!" Bobby groaned. He knew why they'd followed him into the brush, of course. They wanted to save people, protect them. As noble a goal as that was, the older hunter knew damn well that some people just weren't worth sticking your neck out to save -  _especially_ when they'd shown nothing but disregard for any attempt you'd already made - and that Roy was clearly one of those people. 

**"It's over here! It's in the tree!" Roy exclaimed, coming to a stop underneath an old pine. A pair of inhuman hands reached down from the branches, seizing Roy's head in it's hands and snapping his neck easily and yanking him upward.**

Sam flinched away from the sight reflexively, the sickening snap of bones making his stomach twist in a way that brought bile to his throat. He absolutely  _hated_ that sound, he'd heard something like it when he'd broken his arm a few years before. 

**"Roy!" Dean called again, trying in vain to get the man to return, unaware that it was too late. The brothers came to a stop together, looking through the darkness for the guide. Sam shone the flashlight around, though there was nothing to be found.**

**The following morning, Sam was sitting against a hollow tree stump, holding his father's journal and absently fiddling with a lanyard attached to the old leather book. Dean, Haley, and Ben were among the wreckage of the original campers' tents. Brother and sister were resting on the ground while Dean stood just behind them.**

**"I don't.. I mean, these types of things, they aren't supposed to be real." Haley started, clearly unsure of herself and what she was saying.**

Dean snorted, rolling his eyes, unable to help himself. He ignored the reproachful look he got from Sam. 

**Dean, who was** **tracing his fingers over the claw marks on a tree, turned back.** **"I wish I could tell you different." he admitted, moving to crouch nearby.**

**"How do we know it's not out there watching us?" She asked, unable to help looking around.**

**"We don't." Dean admitted. "But we're safe for now." He was sure of it.**

**"How do you know about this stuff?" She asked. The question brought the older Winchester up short as he considered for a moment**

**"Kind of runs in the family." he finally answered, standing a moving off to do something else as Sam returned.**

**"Hey." He greeted. Haley stood up, glancing at him with curiosity. "So we've got a half a chance in the daylight." he informed them. "And I for one want to kill this evil son of a bitch."**

Dean beamed at Sam, both the one on the television and the one that sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, happy to see the future version of his little brother looking for some sort of outlet at least for the anger that wasn't in fighting civilians. His smile faltered a second later as a realization hit him. Sammy was doing what Dad had done - thrown himself into hunting as a release, a way to get out all the pent up anger while simultaneously looking for revenge. His eyes flicked between his father and his little brother, mind suddenly clicking the personality traits together. A low breath hissed from between his teeth as he struggled to focus on the television with the realization. 

**Dean looked up, surprised but not at all upset.** **"Well, hell, you know I'm in." He replied.**

**Sam showed the Wendigo page in the journal to Haley and Ben, explaining the lore to them. "Wendigo is a Cree Indian word It means 'evil that devours.'"**

**"They're hundreds of years old." Dean interjected, coming up behind his brother, water bottle in hand. "Each one was once a man. Sometimes and Indian, or other times a frontiersman or a minor or hunter." He slid between the two as Sam moved off, closing his father's book.**

**"How's a man turn into one of those things?" Haley asked, looking like she wasn't quite sure she wanted to know.**

**"Well, it's always the same," Dean started, picking flashlight up off the ground. "During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help. Becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp."**

Bobby perked up as they began discussing the lore of the wendigo. He recalled reading something in the past, an old native book, about the effects cannibalism could have on a man. Nowhere had it specifically said 'wendigo' but it had spoken of powers attributed to those who partook in common cannibalism, speed, strength, and the like. He hadn't paid much attention to it - it wasn't the information he'd been after at the time - but he now made a mental note to look more into it when he returned home. 

**"Like the Donner Party." Ben muttered sarcastically.**

**"Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh give a person certain abilities. Speed, strength, immortality." Sam continued, looking between the two as he spoke.**

**"If you eat enough of it," Dean cut back in, "Over years, you become this less than human thing. You're always hungry."**

**"So if that's true, how can Tommy still be alive?" Haley asked, sounding doubtful. Dean looked back to Sam, who looked away, before turning back to her.**

**"You're not gonna like it."**

"Pretty sure she doesn't like any of it." Sam commented, casting a sidelong look to his brother. He wouldn't deny that reacting and replying to the TV was a bit relieving, more so than he would've suspected it to be - even if it did feel a little bit ridiculous to do so. 

**"Tell me"**

**"More than anything, a wendigo knows how to last long winters without food. It hibernates for years at a time, but when it's awake it keeps it's victims alive It, uh, it stores them, so it can feed whenever it wants."**

"Oh that's  _gross."_ Dean groaned, reaching  a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose in disgust. "It keeps people  _alive_ while it eats them?! _"_ He couldn't help the small shiver that rushed through him. He watched his future self curiously, and tilted his head when the older him didn't seem at all phased by the fact. It made him wonder again, what all had they seen that had rendered he and Sammy so jaded toward the horror-movie mess? 

**"If your brothers alive, it's keeping him somewhere dark, hidden, and safe. We gotta track it back there." He finished, looking again back to Sam. Haley looked at her brother for a moment, then back to Dean.**

**"And then how do we stop it?" She asked.**

**"Well, guns are useless, so are knives Basically-" he held up a can of lighter fluid, a beer bottle, and the white cloth he'd picked up from around the ruined campsite. "We gotta torch the sucker."**

"Huh. Only thing we know you have to kill with fire is a Rugaru." Bobby mused, and they'd only learned of that a few months ago when John had been faced with one. He absently wondered if there was any connections to the lore, then, if the method of destruction was the same. It wasn't likely, he knew, but it wasn't completely unheard of either.

**Later, Dean lead the way through the woods, Molotov cocktail in his hand. Haley followed, then Ben, with Sam in the rear. They passed several trees marred with claw marks and blood.**

**By the time night fell, Sam was leading the group.**

**"Dean," he called. Quickly, the older hunter caught up, moving past Ben and Haley in the process.**

**"What is it?" He asked, though he didn't need an answer. Sam was looking up at the tree tops, and when he followed the gaze he saw bloody claw marks and broken branches everywhere.**

"That seem a little suspicious to you?" Bobby asked, turning to John curiously. "This thing's supposed to be a great hunter - so why's it leaving 'em a trail to follow?" He couldn't help the unease as he looked back to the red stained gouges in the pines. Creatures were rarely so obvious. Of course, he didn't know much about wendigos, so it was always a possibility that they didn't do much in the way of covering their tracks. It didn't seem likely though. 

"Could be a trap." John agreed, fingers tightening ever so much on the arms of his chair, a new anxiety crawling through his veins when he looked back. 

**"You know," Sam started, moving around to Dean's other side, eyes wide, "I was thinking, those claw prints, so clear and distinct. They were almost too easy to follow." The growling roar from the previous night sounded behind them as the realization was made. More growling came from behind them, causing Sam and Dean to whip around to face it as the trees around them rustled.**

**Haley stood beneath a tree for a moment before blood dripped onto her shirt.**

"Well that's not good." Dean commented, wondering for a moment whose blood it was - surely not the wendigo's, so Roy's or Tom's then? He grimaced, part of his mind forcefully reminding him that these were  _people,_ or at the very least it seemed that way. 

**After a couple drops she realized it and looked up, before leaping out of the way just as Roy's corpse landed exactly where she'd been standing.** **Dean stepped closer, examining the older man's body as Sam moved to Haley's side, almost crouching over her protectively for a second before helping her up.**

**"You okay?" He asked her, "You got it?"**

**"His neck's broke." Dean reported as Sam helped Haley back to her feet. Even more snarls and growls were heard as the creature circled them. "Okay, run, run, run, run, go, go, go!" Dean yelled, practically pushing the others to get them moving. Haley stuck close to Dean, while Ben ran after Sam, struggling to keep up with the longer legged man, before falling into the dirt. Sam stopped, running back to help him up - dividing the group into two and two.**

"What? No, no! Don't split up!" Dean groaned, realizing the fact that Sam ran back to help Ben meant they were effectively broken apart, making the job of the wendigo that much easier. He couldn't exactly blame Sam though - leaving the teenager behind wasn't much of an option, it'd be like throwing a mouse in with a lion if his judgement on the creature was anywhere near the mark. All that aside though, splitting up while there was something after you was  _never_ a good idea, that much was just common sense. 

**"Come on, I gotcha, I gotcha." Sam breathed as he helped the boy to his feet.**

John watched with something akin to curiosity. It was interesting to him, to see Sam in a hunt, even if his outward appearance was a stark contrast compared to what he saw when he looked at his twelve year old. Dean's hunting style he knew - it was a lot like his really. Offensive first, then if all else failed or if there were civilian's in the path of danger, then, defense. Sam's approach seemed to be nearly the exact opposite. He was a defender, not a confrontationalist.  He'd stopped and run back for Ben without a second thought, and now that John thought about it, nearly everything his youngest son had done so far in terms of conflict was based on the drive to protect. He couldn't find it in himself to be too surprised. 

**Meanwhile, Dean and Haley stopped short, the latter screaming at the appearance of the wendigo in front of them.**

**"Haley?" Ben called out, recognizing his sister's cry as he and Sam came to an unsteady stop. Sam bent over, picking up Deans Molotov cocktail, the bottle at that point broken.**

**"Dean!"**

Sam blinked, staring at the screen. He was kind of proud of his future self. Yeah, of course there was worry in his tone when he called out for Dean, but there wasn't panic or helplessness of any sort. Not that he'd ever admit it, but whenever there was trouble, his first instinct was to go to Dean to help, because his big brother would always be there for him. Whenever he couldn't get to him, however, there was an overwhelming fear that burrowed itself into him until his sibling's return that made him feel terribly small. It was a relief seeing that, at some point, that fear wouldn't make him freeze up and render him utterly useless. 

**"If it keeps its victims alive, why would it kill Roy?" Ben asked, looking at Sam expectantly.**

**"Honestly? I think because Roy shot at it, pissed it off." He replied.**

"God knows he was pissing me off." Dean muttered, before feeling the odd flash of guilt that reminded him, yet again,  _that had been a real person._ Or at least it would be. He still wasn't overly clear on the whole 'this is the future' idea yet. He'd chosen to bypass that whole clusterfuck of confusion for now, at least until they had some further validation as to where the discs were coming from. 

**A couple steps later, Ben bent down, seeing an M &M on the ground, then another. He picked one up. **

**"They went this way," he told Sam, who moved over to him, taking the candy and laughing.**

"A candy trail, Dean? Really?" Sam asked, voice lighter than it had been in awhile, as he twisted his torso and craned his neck to look at his older brother. He rolled his eyes as Dean shot him a smug little smile, completely unfazed by the tease. 

"Worked, didn't it?" He replied.

**"It's better than breadcrumbs." he joked, throwing it away. The two followed the trail deeper into the forest, before coming to a mine entrance marked with a sign that read: WARNING! DANGER! DO NOT ENTER EXTREMELY TOXIC MATERIAL. Sam looked back at Ben, shrugged, and went inside. The teenager followed right after, ignoring the other sign that read: KEEP OUT NO ADMITTANCE.**

**Inside the mine, Sam shone the flashlight ahead of them as they advanced, before a low growl sounded from further down the tunnel. Sam shut off the light quickly, pulling Ben against the damp wall behind him protectively. They watched the silhouette of the wendigo advance towards them slowly.**

"Oh shit." Dean breathed, eyes fixed on the inhuman shadow cast on the stone wall, moving steadily closer to Sam and the kid. He glanced away from the screen for a moment, looking to his father and Bobby, seeing similar looks of tension written into their faces as well. As quickly as he looked at them though, he turned back.

**Quickly, Sam turned, pressing his hand against the boy's mouth so that he couldn't scream. The creature took a different tunnel upon coming to the crossing, and Sam released Ben and they continued forward.**

Dean let out a breath he hadn't really been aware he'd been holding, he'd been too wrapped up in what was happening to really notice it. What he noticed now was that Sam let out a similar, if admittedly more shaky, breath. 

**A few steps later, there was a low creak from the floorboards, and the two fell through the tunnel, landing in a pile of bones. Ben spotted them and pushed himself away, leaning his body against Sam's legs. The younger Winchester placed a large hand on the boy's back.**

**"Hey, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay." he repeated, trying to keep him calm and seeming to succeed.**

Bobby was admittedly impressed with both how well the Ben kid was holding himself together, and the way Sam seemed to have a direct hand in keeping him calm. He knew from experience that people tended to panic, and when they did, it usually ended up bloody. He also knew that when you were hunting, keeping part of your mind dedicated to keeping a tagalong from having a complete flip out could be challenging, though Sam seemed to do it naturally, without a thought. 

**He looked up, then around, mouth opening in shock when he saw Dean and Haley hanging from the ceiling by their wrists. He pulled himself to his feet and rushed over to Dean while Ben attended to his sister.**

**"Dean!" He barked.**

**"Haley, wake up!"**

**Sam grabbed Dean and shook him hard. "Dean!" Slowly, the older Winchester opened his eyes. "Hey, you okay?" Sam asked, voice clearly relieved, despite Dean's wince.**

"Well it's nice to know that I didn't get eaten." Dean muttered with a roll of his eyes. 

**"Yeah."**

**"Haley!" Ben continued. "Haley, wake up, wake up!" Ben urged, hands on his sister's shoulders. Sam cut the ropes that held Dean up as Ben did the same for** **Haley, the pair helping their loved ones over to an empty patch of floor and getting them sat down, Dean making a pained noise as they did so.**

**"You sure you're all right?" Sam asked. His brother grimaced in response.**

**"Yeah." He forced out. "Yep. Where is he?"**

**"He's gone for now." Sam replied, looking over his shoulder just in case while Haley divested herself of rope. She stoody, eyes widening as she saw Tom** **hanging nearby, tears falling down her face.**

**"Tommy.." She cried, touching his cheek. Upon the contact, Tom's head jerked up.**

Sam jumped considerably at the man's sudden lurch back to consciousness. He felt heat rise under his skin as he did so, and he looked decidedly away from his brother, whose smug smile he felt rather than saw burning into his back. He told himself that his hyper awareness would be helpful in the future - since clearly he wasn't going to get away from hunting. 

**Haley jumped back and shrieked, before turning to Sam. "Cut him down!"**

**Quickly, Sam complied, and the three helped lower Tommy's limp body to the floor. "We're gonna get you home." Haley assured her brother. Dean looked over to the corner, spotting the stolen supplies from the campsite.**

**"Check it out," he called, holding up two pistols. Sam grinned.**

**"Flare guns. Those'll work." Dean twirled the guns.**

**They headed down a tunnel, Dean and Sam leading, each with a flare gun in hand, while Haley and Ben supported Tom just behind them. Suddenly, the wendigo's growl echoed through the abandoned mine.**

**"Looks like someone's home for supper." Dean's voice was more confident now that they had the flare guns.**

**"We'll never outrun it." Haley pointed out, drawing the older Winchester's attention. Dean looked to his younger brother and the two shared a quick, wordless conversation.**

Bobby very nearly smiled as he saw the silent discussion. The boys tended to do that a lot, more often than they probably realized. It was like they had some secret language that nobody could quite understand except them, just because they knew each other so incredibly well. It was an advantage he'd sincerely hoped they'd utilize while hunting, and it was something positive in his eyes, that they seemed to have kept that bond.

**"You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.**

**"Yeah, I think so."**

**"Alright," Dean started. "Listen to me. Stay with Sam. Hes gonna get you out of here."**

**"What are you gonna do?" Haley asked. Dean winked before starting down a different corridor, yelling.**

**"Chow time, you freaky bastard! Yeah, that's right, bring it on, baby, I taste good!"**

There was collected eye-rolling throughout the room. 

**The farther he moved down the shaft (I feel the need to add that there is no innuendo intended here), the more indistinct his taunts became, leaving the other four alone in the darkness. Sam waited until Dean was a safe distance away before starting to usher the family out.**

**"All right, come on! Hurry!" The Collinses followed the hunter down the tunnel.**

**"Hey, you want some white meat, bitch I'm right here!" Dean yelled as light filtered in through some grating.**

**Meanwhile, Sam, Haley, Ben, and Tom rushed down a tunnel, realizing that they were quickly running out of time. They stilled at the sound of growls pursuing them.**

"They aren't moving fast enough." Sam realized, speaking aloud almost on accident at it hit him. The wendigo was getting closer, too close, and though they were going as fast as they could, what with almost completely holding Tom up, it wasn't nearly enough. Apparently, his future self was realizing that too.

**Sam turned, pointing the gun at it, before lowering it and turning to the other three.**

**"Get him out of here." He ordered, nodding to Tom.**

**"Sam, no." Haley objected.**

**"Go. Go! Go!" Sam yelled as the growling neared.**

**"Come on, Haley!" Ben urged, pulling his sister away. Finally, Haley turned, and she and her younger brother helped Tom along the mine tunnel, moving away and leaving Sam in his place, gun raised and ready to shoot, looking down the tunnel and waiting for the threat to appear.**

**"Come on. Come on." he urged in a soft tone. A growl rumbled out of the beast, close enough to make the rocks behind him tremble, and he turned, to see the wendigo right in his face.**

Dean grimaced at the creature. Usually, whatever they were hunting looked human enough; demons, ghosts, werewolves even. At least they resembled humans part of the time. That thing though was ugly as hell. It's visage actually postponed the shock of _it's right in front of Sammy_ for a full few seconds. Once  _that_ thought hit him, the grotesque look of the wendigo hardly seemed to matter. 

**Sam shot - and missed - before running after the other three.**

**"Sam!" Haley called as the hunter rejoined them.**

**"Come on, hurry, hurry, hurry!" Sam urged, pushing them along best he could until they reached the end of the tunnel, the wendigo right behind them.**

**"Get behind me." He stepped in front of them, his body almost large enough to keep all three Collinses behind him as the beast approached, taking it's time.**

**Dean appeared behind it. "Hey!" he yelled.**

There, John saw it yet again, the protective nature springing up in Sam. He wasn't taunting or moving forward to in any way fight the creature. He just stood there, arms out, a firm and steady wall between the threat and the civilians because that was just what he did. And then Dean was behind the creature, ready to attack while his brother defended - both ends of a spectrum working in imperfect, effective tandem. 

**The wendigo barely had time to turn before Dean shot it in the stomach, flare going off and setting the creature aflame. "Not bad, huh?" he asked. Sam grinned.**

**Outside the Ranger Station, an ambulance loaded up Tom. Two police officers were interviewing Ben, Sam just behind the teenager, nodding as he gave some story about a nine hundred pound grizzly.**

**Haley walked next to Dean, both having already been patched up by the EMTs.**

**"So I don't know how to thank you." She started. Dean smirked lasciviously, and Haley grinned despite herself.**

**"Must you cheapen the moment?" She asked.**

**"Yeah." Dan replied, as a paramedic approached her.**

That answer surprised literally nobody in the room. 

**"You riding with your brother?" he asked.**

**"Yeah." She answered, looking to Ben as the paramedic moved back to the ambulance. "Let's go." Ben nodded at Sam, who smiled and nodded back, clapping his hand against the boy's shoulder once.**

"Awww." Dean cooed. "Sammy made a friend!"

"Shut up." 

**Haley pressed a kiss to Dean's cheek.**

**"I hope you find your father." She told him before they both walked toward the ambulance. "Thanks Sam." She added. They climbed into the emergency vehicle with their brother, who was shirtless and bandaged.**

**Sam sat on the hood of the Impala next to his brother.**

**"Man, I hate camping." Dean deadpanned.**

**"Me too." As the noise of the siren faded away some, Dean looked over.**

**"Sam, you know we're gonna find Dad, right?"**

**"Yeah, I know." He replied tiredly. "But in the meantime? I'm driving." He added with a weak smile. Dean tossed the keys upward, and Sam snatched them out of the air eagerly. The two got into the Impala, slamming the doors in unison.**

The disc faded to black, just as the first one had, though this one left a considerably less tense and horrified atmosphere. In fact, the silence that followed was thoughtful but surprisingly light, even if the underlying wariness of whoever (or whatever) was giving them these glimpses into the future returned. 

"Wendigo." John finally said aloud, voice musing, thoughtful. He grabbed his journal and a nearby pen, flipping the book open to a blank page and scrawling the word in the top corner. He looked up at Bobby. "Think we should look into it? See if it's actually a creature or not?" He asked, speculation slipping back into his voice. 

"Well, diggin' deeper can't hurt." The older hunter replied. "I'll see what I can find. I'm also gonna take a look into Oracles, see if I can find anything with the juice to show us all this." He gestured vaguely toward the TV as Sam reclaimed the disc, slipping it back in the paper sleeve and setting it on the table between his father and Bobby.

"Okay." John replied with a nod. 

* * *

 

Across the street, just below the flickering glow of an old streetlight, three men stood, their figures almost obscured silhouettes. 

"I still am not sure I understand why we are doing this." The first one, the tallest finally spoke. He glanced at his companions, high cheekbones throwing shadows across his face as he tilted his head downward some. 

"Does it really matter?" The second speaker, also second in terms of height and physical stature, asked. His voice was lighter, accented, and carried an air of sarcasm nearly impossible to miss. As he spoke, his light blue eyes didn't tear from the motel, and his expression was almost bored. 

"I believe it does." The first figure replied simply, eyes flicking toward the window of the room that housed the Winchesters. He placed his hands in the pockets of his jacket, the leather making a soft noise that blended with the chirp of crickets. 

"Oh come on boys," The last man grinned, his smile purely mischievous as he turned toward the two of them, "Have a little faith, would ya?" 

 


End file.
